

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 









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A PIECE OF 


KITTY HUNTER’S LIFE 


BY MARY ef BAMFORD 




SEP 1 ,1890 t 

J^^SHINGTOV'' 


JVBW YORK: HUNT 6s> BATON 
CINCINNA TI: CRANSTON &> STOWE 


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Copyright, 1890, by 
HUNT & EATON, 
New York. 


A PIECE OF 

KITTY HUNTER’S LIFE. 


KITTY’S JOURNAL. 

PART I. 

JXTLY 14, 18—. 

T^O you suppose that if I scrub one room a day 
JL/ I can keep this house clean ? ” 

I had poked my head through the slide into ma’s 
room to ask her that momentous question. 

Ma looked over from her bed and laughed. 

“You foolish child!’’ she said. “You wont care 
so much about house-work after a little while.” 

“ See if I don’t,” I answered, thrusting a dripping 
arm and a soapsudsy scrubbing-brush through the 
slide to confront ma. “I’ve scrubbed the zinc under 
the stove till it’s perfectly clean. And I’m at the 
paint in this dining-room now. You wont know 
things, they’ll be so clean when you get up.” 


4 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


Ma laughed again. 

“ Are the potatoes on for dinner ? ” she asked. 

“ Effie’s wasliing them now,” I answered, and I 
shut the slide and went to scrubbing vigorously. 

And then the door-bell rang ; and if it wasn’t that 
pokey Mr. Dayton ! Of all the nuisances on top this 
earth that man is the worst. If a man of sixty 
hasn’t any sense, when is he going to get any ? I’m 
sick and tired of his always coming here for his 
meals. If he did live at our house long ago, when 
Effie and I were children, that’s no reason why he 
should always be poking around now. 

I set him down in the parlor, gave him the morn- 
ing paper, told him I was busy scrubbing paint, and 
was just leaving the room, when he said : 

‘‘ O, let me come right out where you are ! I 
have some verses I want to read you.” 

O, of all things deliver me from Mr. Dayton’s 
poetry! The sentiment is always good enough, for 
he is a very religious man. But the stuff he writes 
is so commonplace. The rhymes are the most ordi- 
nary any body could think of, and the words are 
feebly idiotic at times. 

However, as usual, he took his seat with his manu- 
script in his hand, and while I scrubbed he read. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


6 


He prefaced liis verse with the usual announce- 
ment, “ The Lord gave me these lines.” 

He then proceeded to read. How, as I said, tlie 
sentiment of tlie verse is always religious, and I have 
no doubt that the Lord does give Mr. Dayton such 
feelings of religious zeal as are embodied in his 
hymns; but as for the words used to express those 
feelings — well, I don’t mean to be wicked, but I 
don’t believe that the Lord has any thing to do with 
them. They come out of Mr. Dayton’s own cranky 
head. 

I knew ma was listening over the other side of the 
partition. She would know Mr. Dayton’s voice fast 
enough, and I knew she would smile to herself over 
my visitor. 

Well, I scrub!) on with unnecessary vigor till 
that lengthy poem was finished. And then, just as 
I turned with relief, Mr. Dayton appalled me by 
saying : 

“ How, the Lord is very good. He not only gave 
me these lines, but this time he sent me a tune to fit 
them.” 

“ He was extra liberal ; wasn’t he ? ” I said. 

That was a wicked speech for me to make, I know. 
It was irreverent, and I was sorry the minute the 


6 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

words were off mj tongue. But Mr. Dayton always 
makes me feel perverse. 

He looked at me reprovingly, and I covered my 
confusion by dropping my scrubbing-brush into the 
pan. 

“ I will sing it to you,” he said, gravely. 

And he did. It was certainly an original tune. I 
never heard one like it. I hope I never shall again. 
It was one that didn’t end as a proper, well-behaved 
tune should. It stopped short right in the air, and I 
looked in vain for the rest of it at the end of each 
verse. It lingers in my head yet — the end does, I 
mean — the end that didn’t come. I heard a subdued 
laugh through the slide, and I knew ma had appreci- 
ated the warble. She’s had enough of Mr. Dayton 
in past days when I’ve been in school. How that 
I’m out I suppose she thinks I can enjoy his com- 
pany sometimes. 

He fumbled among his papers, and said, ‘‘I be- 
lieve I have another little poem — ” 

“ O, I can’t stop to hear any more now, Mr. Day- 
ton,” said I, hastily catching up the implements 
wherewith I wage war with dirt. “ I must go and 
see to the dinner.” And I retreated to the kitchen 
door to find Effie in a state of wrath. She too 


Kitty’s Journal. 


7 


had heard the melodious voice from the dining- 
room. 

‘‘ Horrid old thing ! ” she said, as I swept into the 
kitchen. ‘‘ What possessed him to come around when 
ma is ill ? ” 

I patted my poor sister on the back. 

“Bless your heart, child,” said I, in my most 
matronly tones, “he’s always ‘possessed.’ We never 
can get rid of him any more than we can of our 
ancestors. Let me do that.” And I relieved poor 
Effie of her task of simultaneously broiling the steak 
and her face. 

Effie hardly ever “ gets mad.” She’s the best 
tempered creature in the world, and so wlienever she 
approaches a state of wrath it amuses me greatly. 

She sniffed with contempt now, as she set about 
peeling the potatoes for mashing. 

“ Child ! ” she said, scornfully. “ Catherine Hun- 
ter, you’re only two years older than I am. You 
needn’t be so grand.” 

Whereupon we both laughed, and I rushed into 
the dining-room to get a platter. 

Poor pa! He had just come in. He assumed an 
extra air of dignity when he saw Mr. Dayton. Pa 
doesn’t want him around all the time any more than 


8 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

the rest of us do. But we can’t get rid of him. 
We snub him lots of times, but lie’s so sweet-tem- 
pered he just keeps coming ; and we’re so ashamed 
to be forgiven so freely that the next time after 
we’ve snubbed him we treat him very well. And 
so he keeps up heart and walks in on us. A lazy 
man isn’t going to give up a free boarding-place like 
this. 

And then he is very respectable. He dresses 
nicely and is always scrupulously clean, though 
where he gets any money to buy clothes I don’t see ; 
for he never does any thing except preach a little 
sometimes — and I think the people who hire him are 
very foolish. I believe he gets his room in the city 
now in return for looking after the building he is in. 
Hot as a janitor. I don’t mean that. He never 
would think of demeaning himself after that fashion. 
But I suppose no one is using the building now, 
and so he looks after it to see that no one sets it on 
fire, and that no tramps get into it. 

Mr. Dayton received pa with gracious cordiality. 
I should actually have thought that Mr. Dayton was 
the owner of this residence instead of poor pa. 

And then we had dinner; and during that meal, 
of course, Mr. Dayton had to inquire about ma, and, 


Kitty’s Journal. 


9 


after we had explained that she was sick, he looked 
sad, and said, in a solemn manner, ‘‘ Do you think 
she will recover ? ” 

And pa answered, in the stiffest possible manner, 
‘‘ Of course she will.” 

My pa is the most dignified man I ever saw when 
he has a mind to be. The fact is, I’m a little afraid 
of him myself, sometimes. But I don’t need to be, 
for if ever a man thought that he had two daughters 
who were absolutely perfect that man is my pa. T 
don’t believe he ever sees any faults in Eifie and my- 
self. Well, as to EflBe, I don’t see how any one 
cmild find fault with her. She was always good ; nat- 
urally good, I mean, even before she became a Chris- 
tian. I always have told her that she is just like one 
of those perfect children that one reads about in 
old-fashioned Sunday-school books, who die young. 
But as for my amiable self, I’m all faults, and it takes 
the greatest amount of ‘‘prayer, patience, and per- 
serverance,” as old Deacon Hildreth says in his pray- 
ers, to make me decent enough for folks to live in the 
house with me. 

f But my pen is running away with itself. I was 
about to remark that pa’s confident assertion about 
ma’e recovery, and his assumption of dignity, had such 


10 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

an effect on Mr. Dayton tliat lie sighed and stopped 
talking for fully five minutes, and I was so over- 
come at tlie spectacle that I excused myself and 
hastily retired to the kitchen to giggle. From 
which you will perceive, O my new Journal, that 
you have a very silly owner. 

JUXjIT 22a 

I wonder if most girls know exactly what to do 
■^ith themselves when they have finished school. I 
have been so used to a regular routine of study and 
school-work that now I hardly know what to do with 
myself all day long. Of course, there are house-work 
and sewing enough to take up most of the time, and 
when mamma was sick there was plenty of work ; 
but now that she is well enough to be around, and 
Elsie is gone to school all day, I really don’t know 
what to do sometimes. 1 suppose thei’e is work 
enough in the world, only I don’t know just where 
to take hold. 

I always intended to be a teacher, after finishing 
school, but I don’t know of any schools around 
here that are anxious to obtain teachers. Still, there 
is a regular teachers’ examination two months from 
now, and I suppose I would better study for it and 


Kitty’s Journal. 


11 


see if I can obtain a certificate, before I talk about 
teaching. 

I found my old geography and my arithmetic to- 
day. Arithmetic, grammar, and spelling are the 
three studies that the examiners are most particular 
about. Those written examinations come the first 
day, and the next morning all those applicants who 
have failed to obtain the necessary percentages in 
those three are “excused” from attending the rest of 
the examination. It must be awful to be sent home. 
I hope I sha’n’t have to endure tliat mortification. 

AUGUST 4. 

I wish Mr. Dayton would not insist on waiting and 
going to prayer-meeting with me. Last night was 
Wednesday meeting, and Effie felt too tired to go. 
Seems to me she becomes tired very easily, now. I 
don’t know what ails her. Well, ma wouldn’t go 
because Etfie didn’t feel well, and pa couldn’t go 
because he had a patient. 

So I was the only one left without an excuse, and 
Mr. Dayton, who had been in to supper, waited while 
I washed dishes. I was purposely as long as I could 
be. I waited till after the second bell rang, in hopes 
that he would become alarmed and trot on ahead, for 


12 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

he hadn’t said any thing to me about prayer-meeting.. 
I thought may be he had gone, so I walked into the 
dining-room. But no. Tliere he sat in the dark, 
peacefully humming a tune. Mr. .Dayton’s patience 
is remarkable. 

So I had to go. And all the way he quoted re- 
ligious poetry to me. He gazed at the stars and said 
those lines about “ One soul outweighs them all.” 

When we came inside the church, Mr. Dayton 
started for the front seats, as usual, but I didn’t go 
far with him. I watched my opportunity and slipped 
into a seat with some girls. 

Seems to me that some of the prayer-meeting folks 
say queer things, sometimes. One of the men 
prayed for “ our pastor, who is digging into thy 
word.” And one man spoke of “ Herod the teeter- 
arch,” instead of tetrarch. The subject of the meet- 
ing was “ family prayers,” and Mr. Dayton stood up 
and told a queer story. Mr. Dayton’s stories are apt 
to be queer. He said that in one family he knows 
there are family prayers, and the other day that 
family had a fowl for dinner. And after dinner the 
little boy and girl of the family pulled the wdsh-bone 
apart, and the boy got the larger half. His mother 
asked him what he wished for, as he had the half 


Kitty’s Journal, 


13 


on which a wish is made, and the little boj said he 
wished that he might be converted. 

Mr. Dayton said that he thought family prayers 
had a good deal to do with leading the little boy to 
make such a wish over that bone. 

I wish Mr. Dayton wouldn’t tell such things. I 
know he means all right, nevertheless that story upset 
the gravity of two boys on the back seat in meeting. 

But there were some better things said at prayer- 
meeting. One old man whom I had never seen be- 
fore stood up and told us that he had “ come to 
anchor where the sun never goes down.” 

And his face really looked as if he had. I wonder 
if I shall look as happy as he when I am as old. His 
face made me think of something that I read the 
other day. It was, “ Men often carry their souls in 
sight.” 

One thing used to trouble me about our prayer- 
meetings. Three or four of the people who go there 
always want to pray, and they make so long prayers 
that I never can keep my thoughts on what they say. 
Why, in the midst of Mr. Winthrop’s prayer, while 
he used to be wandering on and on, I used to find 
myself thinking about my music-scholars, or some 
hole in the carpet, or next day’s work, or my next 


14 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


new hat. But I never could let my thoughts wander 
when dear old Deacon Adams prayed, although the 
man uses much the same words every time. But he 
always seems so in earnest that one overlooks that, 
and joins in his petitions while he talks about the 
shifting, meandering scenes of life,” and says, O 
Lord, we oft feel sorry that we are not more mindful 
of thy works and thy ways and thy goodness to us.” 

But when Mr. Curtis began to pray, away my 
thoughts would go again. Mr. Curtis is one of the 
best of men, but it seems to be impossible for me 
to listen to prayers as long as his. Jack Bobbins de- 
clares that he timed one of Mr. Curtis’s prayers once, 
and it was twelve minutes long. But Jack Bobbins 
isn’t a very good boy, so I think I wont quote his 
sayings here. 

Well, I began to conclude that there wasn’t mucli 
goodness in me, if I couldn’t keep my thoughts bet- 
ter. Besides, whenever I saw Deacon Curtis, or Mrs. 
Curtis, or Mr. Black, or Mr. Strong get down to pray 
in meeting, I always felt like saying to myself, “ O, I 
wish they wouldn’t ! ” 

And of course that was shocking. 

Well, one day in Sunday-school, when the min- 
ister’s wife was teaching our class, she began to talk 


Kitty’s Journal. 


15 


about prayer. It was a rainy Sunday, and there 
were not many in our class, so there was more time 
to talk, and at last I thought it wouldn’t do much 
harm to ask anyway, and so I screwed up my 
courage, and I said, “ Mrs. Carroll, can you always 
listen to long prayers and keep your mind on them' ? ” 

Mrs. Carroll looked at me a minute, and then a 
sort of smile came into her 'eyes. There wasn’t any 
around her mouth, though. I believe Mrs. Carroll’s 
smile always begins in her eyes. 

“ Ko,” said she ; “ I cannot keep my thoughts on 
a long prayer, especially if I am tired.” 

I was rather astonished at that answer. But I 
didn’t dare question any further. I didn’t suppose 
her thoughts went wandering over the earth the way 
mine did. 

I guess Mrs. Carroll saw that I wanted a longer 
answer, for she went on. 

I think it is a very good plan,” said she, when 
a person who is praying extends his prayer to such a 
length that we cannot give it full attention, to 
cease trying to do so, and go to praying ourselves. 
I think we may pray at such times for those sitting 
around us. For years I have made a practice of that. 
I look over the prayer-meeting, see who is there, and 


16 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

then if I find my thoughts ^wandering during prayer, 
I begin to pray short prayers for those about me : 

‘ Lord, this woman by my side works hard. She 
has five little children. Help her. Give her wis- 
dom to train those children for thee.’ 

“‘Lord, that girl works in a dress-maker’s shop, 
where she has many associates who are not Christians. 
Help her to never be ashamed of thee before them.’ 

“ ‘ Lord, that woman is tempted to say evil things 
of her neighbors. Help her especially to bridle her 
tongue.’ ” 

“ I don’t mean,” went on Mrs. Carroll, “ that we 
are to ignore the prayers that people are offering 
aloud, but I think we may mingle our petitions with 
theirs, and I am sure that I have myself derived ben- 
efit from doing so. I know that some of the meet- 
ings that have been most truly jpmy^r-rneetings to 
me have been those in which I have sat and offered 
up silent petitions for those round me.” 

Well, I don’t know but Mrs. Carroll’s plan is a 
good one. I’ve tried it sometimes since then, and I 
think that at least it is better than letting one’s 
thoughts wander all over creation. But I am afraid 
that sometimes I don’t go to prayer-meeting in 
the right spirit, and then I don’t feel like praying. 


Kitty’s Joubnal. 


17 


I know very well that that is not the frame of mind 
in which a Christian should go to prayer-meeting. 
But it seems to me that nothiijg in my life is more 
discouraging than the difference between the ideal 
Christian that I have in my mind and the kind of 
Christian that I must seem to others to be. And to 
have to walk to church with Mr. Dayton didn’t im- 
prove my frame of mind, or prepare me very well 
for meeting, even if he did quote religious poetry all 
the way. 

Mr. Carroll lent me a book on “ Prayer ” after his 
wife taught the lesson that Sunday. I guess she 
went home and told him about my question. I 
don’t know. Anyway the book came, and I read it 
through. There was one sentence in it about pray- 
ing that I copied, it was so queer. I can’t make out 
yet whether it is really true or not : 

“An effort made in aridity, in wandering of 
thought, under a strong tendency to some other occu- 
pation, is more pleasing to God, and helps the soul 
forward in grace more, than a long prayer without 
temptation.” 

There was a queer young Swede at our prayer- 
meeting. He could hardly talk English enough to 

make himself understood, and once he stopped and 
2 


18 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

said, “I no can tell it. It is behind mj ex- 
pression.” 

But he said some things I could make out. He 
said, O, that we all might earnestlier be ! ” 

And he prayed that we might be kept ‘‘ vatching ” 
and might be full of “ zhoy.” 

I never thought before what a comfort it must 
be, when one is in a foreign country, to know that 
God can understand every thing that one says, even 
if men cannot. How it must lessen the home sick- 
ness when one realizes that ! 

The young Swede had been greatly shocked by the 
death of a companion. It seems, as nearly as I 
could understand from his broken English, that he is 
the only Christian in the factory where he works. 
And the other day some of the young men there 
were joking about Christianity, and making fun of 
religion, and only a few minutes afterward one of 
those young men was caught in the machinery, and 
so dreadfully injured that he died in a short time. 

The poor Swede cried as he told us, and of course 
the crying made his English all the more unintelligible, 
but I think most of us gathered enough sense from 
his speech to feel that we ought indeed to be “ more 
earnsome ” Christians, as he said. 


Kitty’s Jouenal. 


19 


SEPTEMBER 22. 

Well, I’ve taken that teachers’ examination. All 
the last two months I’ve been studying “School 
Law ” and “ Theory and Practice of Teaching,” and 
arithmetic and algebra and grammar, and strings of 
dates in history that I never expect to be able to 
remember, and rhetoric and spelling, although I 
didn’t have to study the last very hard, because spell- 
ing is easy for me. Don’t I remember standing up 
till last in a spelling-match in our church “sociable” 
once, and then, in the height of my glory, being 
floored by “ hippopotamus,” just because I forgot to 
count the syllables, and so put in one “po” too 
many. 

Well, teachers’ examination began. There were 
thirty-two of ns, and we were a scared-looking 
set. Most of us were girls or women ; but there 
were three or four men. I sat in a front seat, just 
where the draft from the transom struck me, and, as 
a consequence, I have about as beautiful a cold in my 
head as any one can boast of. 

Arithmetic was flrst, after we had all paid our dol- 
lar apiece for being examined. Some of the exam- 
ples took me half an hour each, they were so hard ; 
and I was so afraid that I shouldn’t get them right. 


20 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

There were two or three in that miserable French 
metric system, and I was so afraid that I wouldn’t 
remember about the hectoliters and meters and 
grams that I guess I w’asted some of my precious 
time. We had all the forenoon for that written 
examination in arithmetic. It wasn’t any too much 
time, either; and at the end we were requested to 
“make up” some examples to illustrate a certain 
method of teaching primary scholars arithmetic. I’m 
afraid that some of the examiners thought that some 
questions I made up were rather frivolous. One was : 
“A little boy sneezed three times, and his brother 
sneezed six times ; how many sneezes in all ? ” And 
another was : “ A little girl cried three tears, and 
her sister wiped two of them away; how many 
were left ? ” 

I don’t care. Such questions w^ould arrest the 
attention of six-year-olds, I guess. 

“ Surveyor’s Square Measure ” nearly made me 
make a failure, but I remembered it at last; and 
when I handed in that examination paper, after look- 
ing it through three times, I felt pretty certain that 
I shouldn’t be sent home next day on account of 
arithmetic, anyway. 

We had a visitor during the forenoon. She was 


Kitty’s Journal. 


21 


rather a coarse-looking, red-faced woman, who talked 
so loudly that she disturbed us all. She fiercely up- 
braided one of the examiners, who is the county 
superintendent of schools, and who, she insisted, had 
told her a lie about the day on which the examina- 
tion was to begin. 

“You told me it would be next week,” said she, 
excitedly ; “ and I must take an examination or I 
can’t teach in this State, though it’s a shame to 
examine me, that’s taught in Mississippi and Caro- 
lina and — ” 

“Madam,” interrupted the superintendent, “you 
are disturbing the applicants ; they cannot write.” 

And that was true. I was vainly trying to say to 
myself the table of cubic measure. 

But that woman wouldn’t stop. She scolded till 
the superintendent said very sternly, “ Madam, don’t 
you say again that I told you an untruth about the 
time of this examination. I did not.” 

Then the woman calmed down a little, and at last 
she reluctantly admitted that she might have made 
the mistake herself. Why do women want to act 
so like idiots ? 

I ate my lunch in fifteen minutes, and then at one 
came the spelling examination, and after that the 


22 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


grammar; and I was tired enough at five o’clock, 
after writing all day. 

But next morning was the dreaded time for us all. 
After we were seated the number sixty-five was writ- 
ten on the board. That meant, as we all understood, 
that any of us who found that one of the three num- 
bers written on his or her slip of paper was less than 
the number on the board might go home. 

Up and down the aisles walked the examiner, dis- 
tributing those dreadful little pieces of paper. I 
snatched mine up the minute he laid it on my desk. 
It read : 

Ariihmetic 85 per cent. 

Spelling 89 per cent. 

Grammar. 86 per cent. 

Then I was happy. I knew I didn’t have to go 
home. I could look around at the other victims. 

Poor things! Some of them cried, and others 
wanted to cry. Out of our thirty-two seventeen 
went home. Some of them sat still a while, pretend- 
ing that they were going to take the next examina- 
tion questions; but I noticed that after the rest of 
us were writing, the poor rejected ones slipped out 
one by one, as unostentatiously as possible. I think 
some of them couldn’t have studied as hard before- 


Kitty’s Journal. 


23 


hand as I did, and I don’t like to say so, but I’m 
almost certain that some of the applicants had books 
in their desks and cheated. Of course, if the exam- 
iners found that out the applicants would be rejected. 
That was one reason wdiy I wanted to have a front 
seat, so the examiners could see every movement of 
mine and know that I wasn’t cheating. I never 
thought any thing about the wind from the transom 
till after I was numbered, and then 1 couldn’t change 
my desk very well. 

The examinations kept up from Monday morning 
till Friday afternoon. Some of them vrere easy 
enough ; but I didn’t like the oral examinations. It 
was scary to go into one room where an examiner 
sat alone and have him propound questions in men- 
tal arithmetic. And then I had to go off to another 
room where another examiner heard me read. He 
gave me that horrid piece about the sailor-boy. I 
can’t read poetry decently, anyway, and I’m not a bit 
dramatic; so I’m afraid I didn’t do justice to the 
places where it says, “He springs from the ham- 
mock,” and O, sailor-boy, sailor-boy, never again.” 

Well, that was over, and then I had to answer a 
lot of questions about diacritical marks; and I do 
believe I answered half of them wrong, for I'd 


24 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

forgotten to refresh my memory by looking in Web- 
ster’s Dictionary. 

Then 1 had to go to another room and be exam- 
ined in the “Theory and Practice of Teaching.” 
The county superintendent himself was there to ex- 
amine me, and he was quite gentlemanly and made 
me feel at ease, even though he had talked so sternly 
to the red-faced woman. 

I hadn’t read the right books on “Theory and 
Practice,” it seemed. But I guess I went through 
with the questions all right. It seems to me that 
“theory^ and practice” is only common sense, 
anyway. 

The superintendent interviewed a good deal on 
the subject of “ Punishment.” He wanted to know 
if I thought that a punishment should always have 
some traceable connection with the offense, so as to 
appear to the scholar as if the penalty were the 
natural outcome of naughtiness. 

Of course I said, “Yes.” 

“Then,” said he, “you think a teacher should 
have variety in her methods of punishment, and 
should not have the same penalty for every offense ? ” 

“ Yes,” said I, again. 

But, really, I hadn’t thought very much about 


Kitty’s Jouenal. 


25 


punishments, anyway. I hadn’t remembered that I 
should ever have to punish any body. I don’t believe 
I’d like that part of teaching at all. 

“ In one of the schools of this country,” said the 
superintendent, “is a boy who is very awkward. 
He is taller than most of the other scholars; per- 
haps that is what makes him so uncouth. If you 
had in your school such a boy as that, do you think 
that as a punishment for his stupidity you would 
put upon him all the work of the school-room, such 
as sweeping, bringing in wood and water, etc. ? 
Would you impose such work on him alone?” 

Well, I didn’t know exactly what to answer. But 
I thought a minute. 

“ If I were that boy,” said I at last, “ I suppose I 
should have some feelings. I should probably be 
aware that I was ugly and awkward and always 
getting into every one’s way. And if the teacher 
treated me so that the other scholars would look down 
on me, because I had to do the cleaning-up and they 
didn’t, I’m not sure but I should become discouraged, 
and think that I couldn’t ever amount to any thing ; 
that I was awkward and stupid, and I should always 
be so.” 

The superintendent nodded a little. 


26 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


“And jet, do you know,” he said, “that when I 
suggested that to the teacher of that school, and told 
her that she was hurting the boy’s feelings, and per- 
haps preventing him from becoming the man he 
might become, she laughed and said, ‘You don’t 
know that boy. Such fellows as he are only fit for 
scrubbers of the world. He will always be a clod- 
hopper, and I don’t see why I should have the boys 
take turns in doing the work, when this fellow is so 
manifestly adapted to the situation. Do you suppose 
I’m going to ask the smart boys to waste their time 
over such work ? They can do something at books. 
This fellow cannot.’ ” 

Well, that was almost all of the examination in 
theory and practice. It was only common sense, as 
I said. 

This finished the examination. I received my 
certificate yesterday, and now I’m going to hunt for 
a school. 

But, for all that superintendent said to me about 
punishments, I’m not going to revive in my school 
the custom that Lowell speaks of when writing of 
old-time teaching: “The birch was then the only 
classic tree, and every round in the ladder was made 
of its inspiring wood.” 


Kitty’s Journal. 


27 


at is, I don’t think I shall revive that custom. 
I sha’n’t if I can help it. But I’m not going to be 
such an idiot as Annie Everett was. She was always 
a simpleton, 1 thought, when I used to go to school 
with her. "VYell, she went to teaching school a while 
ago, and she had a very had boy in the class. And 
Annie was just full of sentimental notions about how 
to touch scholars’ hearts, and so on. So one day, 
when the boy had been behaving dreadfully, Annie 
kept him in for a whipping. She talked to him and 
told him how his conduct grieved her, and then, so 
as to make him feel repentant, she told him that in- 
stead of whipping him she was going to let him 
whip her. So she gave him the ruler and held out 
her hand. Annie has beautiful white hands. 

Of course, she thought that such a course of treat- 
ment would break the boy’s heart, and he would 
throw down the ruler and burst out crying, and sob, 
“ O, teacher, teacher, I can’t hit you ! You’ve been 
so good to me. I’ll be a good boy.” 

But did any such scene ensue? Was Annie’s sen- 
timental soul gratified? Ko, indeed! That young 
heathen looked at her in amazement, grasped the 
ruler and Annie’s hand, and gave her such a series 
of blows as almost broke her fingers, and then out 


28 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

he rushed, proclaiming to the universe, “ Hip, hip ! 
hurrah ! I have licked the teacher ! I have licked 
tlie teacher ! ” 

Poor Annie! She locked the school-house door, 
and sat down inside and cried. And she had her 
hand in bandages for a week afterward. But she 
might have known better than to try such an experi- 
ment on such a boy. 

SEPTEMBER 25. 

I wonder if papa is worried over Effie. Almost 
every time he and I go to ride, when he is going to 
see his patients, he asks me if Effie coughs nights. 
I know she does a little, and she does not seem to 
be very strong, but I don’t see why he keeps asking 
me that question every few weeks. 

Effie has a music scholar. She’s an Irish girl, 
quite pleasant and neat, but so queer ! And it’s a 
marvel to behold the extraordinary way in which that 
girl puts her fingers down on the piano-keys. She 
touches them as gingerly as though she were afraid 
that the white things would break. I always scrub 
them after she is through practicing. Effie is at lier 
wits’ end sometimes teaching her, I guess. The new 
scholar’s name is Mary Ann O’Connor; and she as- 


Kitty’s Journal. 


29 


tonished Effie by bringing a piece of slieet-mnsic 
here, the other day, and wanting Effie to teach it to 
her right away. And what do you suppose the mu- 
sic was ? “ Whoa, Emma ! ” 

Poor Effie ! How mamma and I did laugh at her ! 
for Mary Ann O’Connor hardly knows one note from 
another yet, and the idea of her going to a music- 
store and buying a piece like that! Mary Ann 
O’Connor has an accordion too, and she brought that 
up and left it here. Effie has picked out tunes on 
it, and I suppose that Mary Ann will expect her to 
teach her how to play on that in about one lesson. 
But Mary Ann is very good about one thing : she 
pays promptly. She brings her fifty cents every sin- 
gle lesson, and hands it over to Effie at the close. 
But what lots and lots of patience Effie has to use 
to teach her ! If I had such a scholar wouldn’t there 
be a rumpus ! 

But may be I’ll have to get used to more stupid 
scholars than Mary Ann. I’ve looked at her some- 
times and wondered what I should do if I had to ex- 
plain fractions to such a scholar. It seems to me 
she never could understand them. And, really, I 
suppose there are few things tend so directly to supe- 
riority in teachers as stupidity in scholars. 


30 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


SEPTEMBEB 29. 

There isn’t any use trying ; all the positions for 
teachers in this city are full. Last Wednesday night, 
after prayer-meeting, one of the church members told 
me of a school about a hundred miles away. She 
said that she knew I could get it, for the people there 
had written to her about securing two teachers. 

I teased and teased ma to let me go, but she 
wouldn’t. She says she wont let her girls go away 
from home to teach. She wants them where she can 
see them. Besides, she says I’m not strong enough 
to teach school. I should like to know why I’m not 
strong enough. Other girls are. I want to earn my 
living. I don’t want to ask poor pa for every cent I 
need. 

But ma is obdurate. She says I may either get a 
school in this town or else I may have the private 
scholars I can find. 

I have one scholar now in music. She’s a little 
girl, but she practices faithfully. Our milkman says 
I may have his boy to teach, but I rather dread it. 
His hands are bony and not washed very clean, 
usually, and I’m afraid he will care a good deal more 
about playing base-ball than the piano. Still, I can 
try him. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


31 


And there is a girl who is too lazy to keep up 
with the classes in the public school. She says if 
I’ll hear her lessons every morning, so she "wont have 
to go to school, she will pay me a dollar a week. Her 
folks let her do as she likes ; that is, her mother does, 
and her father can’t help it. 

But I’m not very joyful over the prospect of such a 
scholar, for I know just how things will go. I’ll say. 
Divide f by and she will write it down, and then 
she will say, “ O, Will and Ed were in last night to 
see me, and they said,” etc. 

And I sha’n’t be able to stop her talk and make her 
pay attention to work, and it will take her half an 
hour to do an example she might do in two minutes. 
She doesn’t take any interest in lessons, anyway. 

SEPTEMBEB, 30. 

Effie has left school. She doesn’t seem to be sick, 
but she has a little cough all the time. She says she’s 
“so tired.” 

I went to the high school and got her books for 
her, because she did not want to tell the teachers she 
w^as going to leave. I think she didn’t want to say 
“ Good-bye ” to some of them. 

The old rooms looked just as they used to when I 


32 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


went there. There were just as many stairs to climb, 
and just as many rows of hooks with hats and din- 
ner-pails on them ; but mine were not there, and I was 
rather glad. 

Miss Hunt came and spoke to me, and I cried a 
little. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t seeing her so 
much, but I was so nervous over EflSe, and I had to 
explain to Miss Hunt about her. 

“ I have noticed she coughs a good deal,” said Miss 
Hunt. “ But I thought it only a cold. I hope she 
will soon be able to come back.” 

“ Perhaps she will,” I answered, and then I came 
away with my arms full of books. 

But to-night Effie seems so bright and happy that 
I don’t believe I need worry, after all. She has prob- 
ably overworked herself at school. 

Effie and I are always going to live together. 
We’ve planned it all out — how we shall be two of the 
nicest old maids in the world, and we shall always do 
lots of good and be happy. This is what Effie wrote 
in my autograph album the other day ; 

“ You and I will always stay 
Close beside each other ; 

And don’t you ever go away 
To get for me a brother.” 


Kitty’s Journal. 


33 


Of course I slia’n’t ! A sister like Effie is nicer 
than any man that ever existed — a great deal nicer ! 

DEC2MBEK 25. 

It’s Christmas, and we’ve had all the relatives here 
for dinner. But I know none of us four felt like 
having them. Kot that we were not glad to see 
them, but Effie has been so miserable all day that she 
could hardly sit up, and we didn’t want her to have 
to do so. She has had a high fever to-day. Her 
cheeks were very much flushed. She has some fever 
every day now. She keeps taking medicine for it, 
but the medicine does not seem to do much good. 

Effie gave me a little hairpin-basket that she’s been 
fixing for me. I saw her knitting all the green 
worsted, but I couldn’t imagine what she was going 
to make of it. She gave me a roll of flute-music, 
too ; flute and piano duets, I mean. We are going 
to try them when she feels better. 

But she is so easily tired. The other day after the 
washer-woman had gone, mother and I went at the 
ironing. Effie wanted to help, but I wouldn’t give 
up my place. We have only four flat-irons, and 1 
told her that ma and I needed those. 

But she teased so to help that ma let her take her 
3 


34 


A Piece of Kitty Huntek’s Life. 


place for a few minutes. That was long enough. 
Effie ironed a couple of things and then she had to 
sit down. She was too weak to do more. Put ma 
told me afterward that I ought to have let Effie try. 

“It makes her feel better to try,’’ said mamma. 
“ Slie will see soon how little she can do. But of 
course it is hard for her to have to sit still, when she 
has been used to helping. You wouldn’t like it, 
Kitty.” 

Ko; I don’t think I should like it at all. 

A girl sent in her autograph album, asking Effie to 
write in it. I know the girl thinks Effie is going to 
die. I don’t see why people have to keep insisting 
on that. It isn’t so. I’m not going to believe it. I 
don’t think people need be so cruel. 

This is what Effie made up and wrote in the 

album : i * .1 

“ When trial comes upon thee 

And doth thy heart with sorrow fill, 

Remember One above thee 

Can comfort thee in every ill.” 

Effie’s poor little white fingers trembled so that 
she could liardly write the lines. The girl she wrote 
them for is not a Christian, I think. At least she is 
not a church member. Maybe Effie thought the verse 
would do the girl good. I hope it will. But I don’t 


Kitty’s Journal. 


35 


want any more folks coming here with autograph 
albums, and looking as though they expected her to 
die the next minute. Because she isn’t going to. 

Effie and I went down to the photographer’s the 
other day to have our pictures taken together. We 
had to \vait a long, long time, for it was one of the 
busy days, and Efiie was so tired by the time that the 
photographer was ready that she looked like a ghost. 

I was sorry to have the pictures taken now, when 
Effie feels so badly, but she wanted to do it. She said 
she wanted them for Christmas presents for people. 
And the photographer had the pictures done in time. 
But when I looked at them I was startled. I didn’t 
know before that Effie had grown so thin. 

And if Mr. Dayton didn’t come walking in when 
the photographs were lying on the table, and if he 
didn’t see them and say, “ O, may I have one ? ” 

And Effie was such a goose that she said, 

“ Why, yes.” 

I told her afterward that she ought not to have let 
him have one, and she looked amazed, and said. 

Why, Kit, what difference does it make ? lie is so 
old, and 1 thought may be he hadn’t had any Christmas 
presents at all. I don’t see who there is to give him 


36 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


So, as the deed was done, I held my tongue. But 
we didn’t go to all the bother of getting those pict- 
ures just to let Mr. Dayton have one. I should 
think he got enough things out of this Hunter family 
without asking for any thing more. He brought me 
twelve yards, more or less, of rhymes the other day. 
Said he wanted me to look them over and give my 
opinion on them, for he is going to try to have some 
publisher throw away his money in printing them. 
I know in my inmost soul that no publisher will ever 
read an inch of the stuff. 

MAT 18. 

Mr. Dayton had been out walking on the hills, and 
had found a bird’s nest with some little ones in it, 
and so, of course, he had to sit straight down on the 
hill and write a ‘‘ poem ” on the discovery. He 
copied the verse in his best handwriting — Mr. Day- 
ton w^rites beautifully when he tries — and gave the 
gem to me. 

Afterward Mr. Dayton did a much better thing. 
There is an Irishman making a drain in our back 
yard. I had asked him if he couldn’t let his children 
go to our Sunday-school, but that was as hir as I had 
dared go in religious things. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


37 


But Mr. Davton was better than I. He went out 
to look at the apple-trees, and then he talked to the 
Irishman. I could hear part of the conversation, and 
I really thought that Mr. Dayton did use a great deal 
of tact in bringing in religion and trying to talk to 
that man about being a Christian. The man didn’t 
seem to be at all offended, and he took the little Testa- 
ment that Mr. Dayton offered him. Ma sent the 
Irishman some pie to eat with his lunch afterward. 
I guess that Irishman thought that we cared for him, 
body and soul too. 

Mr. Dayton has told me that he often goes to the 
city hospitals to talk and pray with the sick men 
there, and I am sure he must do good if he talks 
with as much tact as he used with that Irishman. 
I have no doubt that Mr. Dayton is an earnest Chris- 
tian, and if I have ever written any thing in this 
journal implying the contrary I am sorry. The 
trouble with Mr. Dayton is not his heart but his 
head. 

Perhaps, though, since he really desires to do good, 
the Lord may give him wisdom enough to win some 
kinds of people. I hope so. I think myself that 
one of the hardest things for a Christian to learn is 
how to so speak to people about Christ as not to dis- 


38 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


gust them or make tliein offended, but to win them 
to love him. I think there is a way of ‘‘ confessing 
Christ,” so called, that may do harm, because the one 
talked to can see that the words are merely said for 
effect and do not come from the speaker’s heart. 
But I am afraid myself that I do not speak enough 
to other people from my heart or any other way. I 
don’t suppose that it is always necessary to talk one’s 
religion. If one could live it, it might have a greater 
influence on some people. I read this little scrap 
from Bishop Huntington the other day: “We are 
taught and we teach by something about us that 
never goes into language at all.” 

MAY 20. 

I have not practiced much lately, because Effie 
has been too weak to bear the sound of the piano. 
Sometimes I have taken the flute out to the wood- 
shed, and practiced there, but even then the sound 
will come into the house, and I am afraid it has 
annoyed her sometimes. 

But yesterday she was stronger. It had been one 
of her “ good days, ” and she told me I might prac- 
tice on the piano a while. I had just been aching 
to get my fingers on those keys, so I went to the 


Kitty’s Journal. 


39 


piano, opened it, sat down, and had struck a few 
notes, wlien I heard Effie sob out, “ O, I did hope 
I wouldn’t do that ! ” 

I turned around, and mamma went to Effie. She 
was looli^ing at her handkerchief and crying. 

“ What is it ? ” I asked. But mamma held up the 
handkerchief, and then I saw it was stained a little 
with blood. Effie had been coughing a little when 
I sat down, hut she coughs so often that I didn’t 
suppose any thing different from usual was going to 
happen. 

It was the first time that Effie had ever had such 
an experience, and she was very much frightened 
for a moment. She cried a little in a weak sort of 
way, and mamma and I had her lie down, and we 
covered her up and comforted her, and told her 
that we didn’t think she would have a hemorrhage 
from the lungs at all. Probably she wouldn’t see 
any thing more of it if she kept quiet. And by and 
by she calmed down. 

Pretty soon she asked me why I didn’t go on with 
my playing. 

As though 1 could care any thing about music after 
such a fright as that ! I shall never play that polka 
again without remembering what happened yesterday. 


40 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

I told her I didn’t want to practice, and then ma 
and I kept still, and pretty soon Effie went to sleep. 
She has not been troubled that way since, but I didn’t 
know before that there was any danger of such a 
thing. I’m afraid Effie is worse than I thought. 
She has night sweats, and is often chilly or feverish, 
and she grows thinner every day. 

Ma found three white violets in bloom to-day, 
and she brought them in and pinned them on Effie’s 
pillow, where she could look at them and smell 
them. The flowers are beginning to bloom, and I 
tell Effie that as soon as that pink rose-bush of hers 
in the back-yard is out, 1 am going to put her into 
the big rocking-chair, and ma and I will lift it 
down the steps, and I will draw the chair around 
the walk, so that she can see the bush. Effie seems 
to be almost afraid to have me try the experiment, 
but I tell her we can easily do it. 

That is the way I help her into the bed-room every 
night. It is so hard for her to walk the length of the 
parlor and go into her room. I saw it was becoming 
more and more of a task for her to do it, and so I 
told her I’d draw her to bed every night in the rocking 
chair. She utterly refused to let me do it at first, 
but now she seems to be very glad of my help* 


Kitty’s Jouenal. 


41 


Mamma and I put her to bed as if she were a baby. 
She coughs so much nights that she is always glad 
to get up early, and I comb her hair and dress her, 
and draw her out in the rocking-chair and build a 
fire for her almost every morning before six o’clock. 

And she sits by the fire, and crochets and makes 
lace, as much as she can. She is making mamma a 
white shawl. And she is embroidering some red 
fuchsias. There seems to be no end to the pretty 
things she wants to make, but she doesn’t have 
strength enough to work very long at a time. 
But I think she will be better soon. She says 
she is sure she shall. 

MAY 30. 

0 my Journal, my Journal, how can I bear it ! 

She keeps going on, becoming weaker and weaker 

every day. Last Thursday mamma told her that 
she thought she would better lie abed. And she did 
that day, and she has not sat up a whole day since. 

1 don’t dare to cry. I don’t do it, even when I am 
alone in my room nights. I am so afraid that if I 
once break down I shall never be able to regain my 
composure again. 

We all have been very calm. I don’t know how 


42 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

we all keep so. It seems to me sometimes as if 
I must throw myself down and cry my very life 
out. 

The other day — she has grown rather childish, and 
little things please her — she said she wanted two 
things : a bunch of purple lilacs and a little kitten. 
I ran over to our washerwoman’s and got the bunch 
of lilacs, but the kitten was rather hard to find. 
However, at last I did find one, with its eyes just 
open, and I took the gray, mewing thing home. 

Effie was quite pleased with the kitten, but it was 
hardly old enough. It wandered around and mewed, 
and tired her too much. So, at last, when it began 
to grow dark, I took the kitten away, and put it on 
the floor and gave it its supper. Effie lay and 
watched it, and enjoyed the performance, which I 
tried to make just as funny as I could. 

It grew darker, till at last Effie and I could not see 
each other distinctly. I knew I was fast losing com- 
mand of myself, so I rose and was going out of the 
room, but Effie stopped me. 

‘‘Don’t go,” she said. “I don’t want to be left 
alone.” 

So I stayed. But while I pretended to play with 
the kitten, and said a merry word now and then. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


43 


Effie could not see how mj tears dropped upon 
that kitten. I could not keep them back, and Twas 
glad when I found that Effie was asleep and I 
could tiptoe out of the room in the dark. It did 
seem as though I could not stay there another mo- 
ment. 

And this morning, when Effie was abed, and papa 
and mamma and I had tinishcd breakfast, papa had 
read in the Bible as usual, and we all knelt down, 
and papa said a few words, and then, suddenly, he 
stopped and broke out sobbing. He couldn’t say 
another word. And he shook and trembled and 
could not stop. I never heard him cry before. 

And, of course, that broke us all down. And we 
just knelt there, we three, till by-and-by, when papa 
could say a few words, he sobbed out, “ For Christ’s 
sake. Amen.” 

And then we got up from our knees. After a 
while papa kissed us both as usual, went to the bed- 
room and peeped at Effie and found her asleep, so he 
couldn’t kiss her, too, and then he went down to his 
office. Poor father ! It is hard for us all, but I some- 
times think hardest of all for him. 

I know all now. I know for a certainty what is 
coming. O, my little sister, my little sister 1 


44 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

JUNE 2. 

I have not said a word to Effie about dying. I 
cannot do it. The other day I was reading to her, 
and I came across some verses about heaven. I 
had to read them, but it was all I could do to get 
through. 

And when I finished she said, peacefully, “Yes, I 
like to hear — ” 

And I broke in talking about something else. I 
cannot talk to her about that. 

But mamma has. 

One day, when I came home from doing an errand, 
I saw mamma sitting in Effie’s room. Mamma mo- 
tioned me away as I came toward the door, and I saw 
that she had been crying. I went away, but after- 
ward mamma told me that Effie and she had been 
talking about dying. And she said that Effie was 
very calm about it; more so than she was. Mamma 
told her that dying to a Christian is just like going 
through a door from one room to another. 

And then Effie talked about those whom she should 
see there. She did not seem to be afraid at all. 
Only one thing troubles her, and that is that she can- 
not keep her thoughts together when she prays. But 
that is because she is so very weak. Mamma told 


Kiity’s Journal. 


45 


her that the Saviour will hear broken petitions and 
ejaculations just as well as longer prayers, and that 
appeared to comfort Effie, although it seems to me 
that I should have known that without being told. 
But Effie has really become childish in some things, 
she is so feeble. 

I am glad that mamma can talk to Effie. Papa 
cannot, and I am sure I should break down if I tried, 
for that day when I read her tliose verses about 
heaven I went out into the kitchen to wash dishes, 
and there was no one there but our washerwoman, 
eating her dinner, and I couldn’t keep quiet any 
longer ; 1 cried and cried over those dishes till the 
washerwoman spoke and said, ‘‘Xow, Miss Kitty, 
don’t — don’t be after takin’ on so. Sure, an’ it’s the 
good God that says wdien we’re all to go. An’ sure, 
he’s always right.” 

Yes, I know that. I am not rebellious about it. 
I can give her up to him. And surely crying isn’t 
rebellion. 

After I finished those dishes I went and found the 
quinine bottle, and took a dose, and lay down and 
rested a while. I must not allow myself to become 
so unstrung. I shall break down in the presence of 
Effie next. ~ 


46 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


JUNE 4. 

Mr. Dayton comes in almost every day. lie will 
talk all tlie time as thongli there is not the slightest 
chance of Effie’s getting well. 

The other day at the table, after papa and mamma 
were through eating and had gone into Effie’s room, 
Mr. Dayton looked over from his third cup of tea, 
and said, in his blandest tones, “Well, Kitty, I’m 
afraid we’re not going to have our Effie much longer.” 

I suppose Mr. Dayton thought that I would begin 
to cry immediately, and that he would have the in- 
teresting privilege of coming around to my side of 
the table and getting out his big pocket-handkerchief 
and wiping my tears away. 

But he was mistaken. 

“ I’m afraid not,” I answered, in my coldest tone, 
and Mr. Dayton took a look at my face and sub- 
sided. 

“ Our Effie,” indeed ! I believe she’d be disgusted 
now to hear him say such a thing. She doesn’t be- 
long to him, even if he did carry her in his arms 
when she was a little girl. 

But I guess that really he is somewhat sorry. Only 
I wish that he wouldn’t say right out that Effie can- 
not recover, because she does have “good days,” 


Kitty’s Journal. 


4T 

when she doesn’t congh so very much, and when she 
feels quite bright. Then ma and I feel encouraged, 
and talk about her getting well. Effie always smiles 
and seems to acquiesce. 

“Yes,” said she, one day, “I’m going to have a 
beautiful summer.” 

I looked at her, but I couldn’t make out exactly 
what she did mean. 

I don’t know that she cares very much, though, if 
Mr. Dayton does come around. He does not see her 
very often. The other day we let him go in, and he 
talked with Effie awhile, and then he praj^ed with 
her. I don’t think it hurt Effie at all. She had just 
as lief see him. 

Only she said afterward that there was one thing 
that she did not like in his prayer. He said, “ For- 
give us our sins, if we have sinned.^'' 

That shocked Effie. 

“ It seemed just as though he wasn’t sure whether 
we needed forgiveness or not,” said she, afterward. 

But w^e reminded her that Mr. Dayton thinks him- 
self to be nearly perfect. And Effie smiled at the 
remembrance of that gentleman’s peculiarities. 

That was one of Effie’s good days. But she has 
had several very poor ones since. She coughs so. 


48 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

and she cannot eat any thing. I walk all over town 
and get her things, and the neighbors cook her dainty 
little dishes, but she cannot do more than taste of 
any thing, and often she cannot do that. 

The other day she had eaten almost nothing, and 
so, when she fell into a doze in the day-time, ma and 
I went to work in the kitchen, and ma made her a 
custard and I some little cakes. By the time she 
woke they were done. 

“ What did you do that for ? ” she said, when she 
saw what we brought in ; ‘‘I can’t eat.” 

And she couldn’t, although she did just taste a 
spoonful of custard. 

Mr. Dayton fares sumptuously when he comes 
here now, for there are so many things in our cup- 
board that we’re glad to have him eat them. I sug- 
gested to mother the other day that perhaps Mr. 
Dayton’s visits were more frequent on that account ; 
but ma looked at me and said, gravely, 

“ Beally, Kitty, you are growing uncharitable. I 
think the man comes because he is so sorry about 
Effie. Why, he has known her ever since she was 
six years old. Of course he is sorry.” 

“ Yes, I suppose he is,” I answered, meekly. 

Mr. Dayton brought over a number of steel 


Kitty’s Journal. 


49 


engravings for EflSe ; that is, he lent them to her 
to look at. She enjoyed seeing them, too. 

There is one she especially admires. It is a pict- 
ure of Christ, with John sitting beside him, John’s 
head on Christ’s breast. It is a beautiful picture, the 
two faces are so expressive, and the Saviour is so pe- 
culiarly tender. I don’t approve of pictures of him 
as a general thing, but this one is different from most. 

When Mr. Dayton saw how much Effie liked that 
picture he told her she might have it. And we have 
fastened it where Effie can see it. She lies and 
looks at it a great deal of the time. I do not know 
who designed tlie picture, or what it may be a print 
of, but I think whoever made it must have been 
a Christian, and I wish the artist might know what a 
comfort that picture has been to Effie. 

JUNE 6. 

No ; crying is not rebellion. I did not think it 
was, because I have not felt as if I would wish to pre- 
vent God from doing whatever he sees best. But I 
found some words the other day that express what I 
have intuitively felt must be true. This is the 
passage : 

‘‘Tears, if deep-rooted grief does not prevent, 
4 


60 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Lite. 

furnish almost the only mitigation of which the 
mourner is susceptible ; and what nature demands 
God does not forbid. There is no sin in the feel- 
ings of lively sorrow which such bereavements pro- 
duce. The blessed Saviour did indeed forbid the 
daughters of Jerusalem to weep for him, because he 
had undertaken to bear the curse of God for us 
without alleviation ; but he tells them to weep for 
themselves and their children. He did also exhort 
the bereaved widow of Nain not to w’cep ; but the 
reason of this was that he intended immediately to re- 
store to life her only son, then lying dead before her.” 

JUNE 14. 

It is all over. 

One day, about a week after I last wrote here, 
I was sitting by her bed toward noon. She was 
trying to cut some pictures out of some old mag- 
azines of hers. She had cut out two. She was 
going to make a box of pictures to lend to sick 
children. 

I noticed that she had difficulty in cutting out one 
picture, and I ofTered to help her. So, as she was 
willing, I took the scissors from her little white, 
weak hands, and cut that third picture out. 


Kitty’s Journal. 51 

As I was doing so I noticed a sort of spasm come 
over her face. 

Wliat is it ? ” I said, alarmed. 

“ Lift me,” she gasped. 

I lifted her easily. She was so light that I could 
have carried her myself. 

And as I held her I called as loudly as I could 
for mamma. She was out in the dining-room, and 
did not hear me till I held Effie with one arm and 
reached for the little bell near by, caught it, and rang 
again and again. 

Mother came hurrying in, and I laid Effie gently 
back on the pillow. 

I feel as if I had sprained something in my side,” 
she said, faintly, in answer to mother s questions. 
And then mother told me to go for father. 

I was hurrying to go, when father walked into the 
dining-room. He had come home to lunch. 

I sent him into Effie’s room, and when I saw the 
look that came into his eyes I knew that the hour 
was near. 

We opened the doors and windows, for Effie could 
hardly breathe. And for the next two hours and a 
half she lay dying. 

We took turns fanning her. She tried again and 


52 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

' again to raise the phlegm that was gradually filling 
her throat, but she could not. It was the first chok- 
ing spell she had ever had. 

Once, when papa was fanning Effie, mamma and I 
went back to the dining-room, where stood our table 
with the dinner on it that no one could eat. 

“ If she doesn’t come out of tliis she will die,” said 
mamma, trembling. 

I suppose she wanted to prepare me for what was 
coming. But I knew already. 

Sometimes people do come out of them,” mamma 
went on. “Efiie never knew there were such spells 
in consumption, I think. She never asked me any 
thing about it, and I couldn’t bear to speak to her 
about choking to death.” 

Then mamma went back to the bed-room, and I 
was left alone. But I could not pray that Effie might 
come out of that spell and live to dread and to suffer 
other choking spells. 

I went back to the bed-room as papa came out. 
Mamma was fanning her and saying the verse, 
“ Though I walk through the valley of the shadow 
of death, I will fear no evil : for Thou art with me.” 

And Effie'nodded ‘‘Yes.” 

She could not talk any more. 


Kirry’s Jouenal. 


53 


Papa came back into the room, and we watched 
her till at last she lifted np her eyes with a last 
efi’ort and looked at mamma. Then we all kissed 
her, her eyelids dropped, she gave two gasps for 
breath, and lav still. 

Papa said, “ She is gone,” and he put his arm 
around mamma, and while they cried together I ran 
out of the room and up-stairs, and threw myself on 
my knees beside my bed. 

And there, as I knelt, and cried as I never cried be- 
fore, I thanked God over and over in the midst of my 
sobs that Effie was through with her pain. I know 
people who never have gone through such things 
would have thought that I was the most inhuman 
monster in the world to thank God that my sister 
was dead. But he understood. lie has not listened 
to all the agonized cries of this world for ages with- 
out comprehending the inner meaning of each cry. 
I am thankful that we can say things to him that 
we could never say to the dearest friend we have 
on earth. 

After several hours I came down stairs again. 
Some one had come, and mother was in the parlor 
with the* visitor. In a few minutes Mr. Dayton 
came in and inquired after Effie. Papa told him 


54 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

she was dead, and Mr. Dayton sighed heavily and 
walked the floor for awhile. 

In a subsequent conversation with me he informed 
me tliat he had had no lunch. Well, I felt as though 
doing any thing was better tlian sitting down and 
thinking, so I went and got him some. There 
were a good many little delicacies in our cupboard. 
They had been fixed for Eftie, and I knew that 
none of the rest of us would ever want to look at 
them. So I put them all on the table and called Mr. 
Dayton. 

He came tiptoeing out and beamed upon me to 
such an extent that I was disgusted, and left the 
room. His look seemed to say, “How much you 
must care for me if, in the midst of your sorrow, you 
could stop to prepare such a lunch as this for me ! ” 

Men like Mr. Dayton always take every thing 
wrong. 

But I was glad that I had got lunch for him, for 
when supper-time came, a little while afterward, he 
refused to sit down with us, and it was such a relief 
for us to be able to sit together without any one else 
looking on. We couldn’t eat any thing. Papa 
took a swallow of tea and left the table. Ma and I 
pretended to eat till he left. Then we stopped. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


55 


Some women had laid Effie out during the after- 
noon, but they had to go away toward night, and so 
some way, when it grew dark and people began to 
come and ask if they might see Effie, there was no 
one beside myself to show her to them. Papa and 
mamma were sitting in the dark in the dining-room, 
and I wouldn’t let any body go in there. And 
people just kept coming. I took one after another 
into the room where Effie was lying, and I lifted the 
napkin from her dear, thin face, and I answered 
question after question: “Is there consumption in 
your family ? ” “ Did she suffer much ? ” “ Ilow did 

she die?” “Ilow long was she abed?” “You’ll 
miss her, wont you?” “How long had she had 
that cough ? ” “ Isn’t she awfully changed ! ” 

I don’t know how I did it. Ma said, afterward, 
that she thought it was dreadful that I had to talk 
to so many people. But, then, when one has suffered 
through and through, a little more doesn’t so much 
matter. And every body wanted to see Effie. 
Why, that was what they came for ! 

Hot a tear did I cry all the time. I didn’t feel 
like crying any more. I just went through the 
wdiole as apathetically as though I were a door- 
opener at a museum, ready to show the people what 


56 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

was inside. I saw one woman look at me curiously 
as she went out. She said to another, ‘‘ What a 
queer girl that is ! ” 

And yet none of all the visitors offered to take my 
place and let me go away where I wouldn’t have to 
see people. 

But, about nine o’clock, aunt and uncle came*. 
They were going to sit up all night, so I left the 
front door and went to bed. 

Kext morning I could cry. I never want to be 
so I cannot again. Aunt made me drink a cup of 
coffee, and then I went into Eflie’s room and knelt 
down beside her. There was no one else there, and 
some way being near her comforted me. 

Toward noon Mr. Dayton arrived. He brought 
a poem ” witli him. It was about Effie. It’s my 
private belief that that man had been making up 
those lines all through the past few weeks while 
Effie has been so sick. He didn’t say so, but I know 
he never wrote all that since he was here the night 
before. He wanted it printed in some religious 
paper as a sort of obituary of Effie. I don’t know 
whether it’s good or bad, I’m sure. He read it to 
me, but my head was so mixed up that I couldn’t 
comprehend things. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


57 


Some of the church people came in to see what 
hymns we wanted sung at the funeral. Mr. Dayton 
was sitting there and he suggested that they should 
sing, “ Sister, thou wast mild and lovely.” 

I vehemently opposed the idea. Kot because it is 
an old-fashioned hymn, but because it was Mr. Day- 
ton’s suggestion. Effie was ‘‘mild and lovely” 
enough to make the hymn appropriate, but I didn’t 
want it and wouldn’t have it. Papa and mamma left 
the music all to me, and I picked out some Sabbath- 
school tunes that Effie liked. 

Mr. Dayton coolly requested that he might be 
allowed to preach the funeral sermon, as our minis- 
ter, Mr. Carroll, was just going away to attend a con- 
vention. But Mr. Carroll sent word that, of course, 
he would come if we wanted him ; he had expected 
to. And I begged Mrs. Carroll not to let him go 
away, for we couldn’t have endured hearing Mr. 
Dayton. He would have wept, and drawn out the 
service, and told all the touching things that he could 
remember about Effie, till by the time he finished we 
should have been in such agony that we could have 
hardly endured it. 

So Mr. Carroll did stay, and the funeral text he 
chose was, “ And I heard a voice from heaven saying 


58 


A Piece op Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the 
Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that 
they may rest from their labors ; and their works do 
follow them.” 

We had the service in the front parlor, because 
papa did not want to take Effie to the church. And 
0, afterward, when the people had looked at Effie 
and had gone out, how papa hated to have Effie’s cof- 
fin shut ! There was no one in the room but rela- 
tives, and papa went to the coffin and put his dear old 
head down on Effie’s, and he kissed her and kissed 
her, and cried, till I thought I could not endure it. 

And then we took her out to the cemetery and 
buried her. And the women covered her grave with 
beautiful white fiowers. And then we all came away, 
after Mr. Dayton had prayed. We let him do that, for 
we thought may be he felt hurt about not preaching. 

Mr. Dayton kissed Effie too. Not at the funeral, 
but before. 

He asked me if I would let him see her, as he had 
not seen her since she died. 

So I took him into the room where she lay ; and 
he stood and looked at her a while, and sighed, and 
said, “ Precious child ! ” And then, just as I thought 
he was through, and I was going to let him out the 


Kitty’s Journal. 


59 


door, he bent down and kissed Eftie on the forehead. 
Miiy be it was wicked, but I thought to myself, 
* How disgusted she would be if she knew ! ” 

Still, I think Mr. Dayton was really sorry. He 
tiptoed out of the room with a doleful look on his 
face, anyway. 

“If she knew!” To think I must always say 
that, all the rest of my life 1 To think that I shall 
never know whether or not she can see all the little 
things over which I rejoice or grieve, or can sympa- 
thize in such feelings. Perhaps she can. There is 
nothing that I can find in the Bible that is against 
such a belief. But we have been so used to telling 
each other every thing ! 

JirNE 16 . 

I found that roll of flute music Effle gave me last 
Christmas, and I tied it up and put it away. I can 
never play it now. I took the little hair-pin basket 
too, and hid it in my trunk. 1 did not think, when I 
saw her slim little white fingers knitting tliat green 
worsted, that she was making something that I should 
some day hide away after this fashion. 

I believe George Eliot was right when she said, 
“ It is as hard for a boy or girl to believe that a great 


60 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

wretchedness will actually befall them, as to believe 
they will die.” 

It isn’t a grammatical sentence, but I believe in the 
truth of what she meant. I never should have be- 
lieved that any such sorrow would come to me. Of 
course I knew that people all died some time, but I 
never thought about that fact’s applying to any of this 
family. 

There was a little money left in Effie’s purse in the 
bureau-drawer. I put the last half-dollar into her 
purse one day when Mary Ann O’Connor took her 
lesson. Effie was feeling so badly that I knew she 
wasn’t fit to fuss with scholars. She was almost in a 
chill, and yet she was going into the parlor to teach. 
She had a hot flat-iron witli her, and she said she was 
going to keep it in her lap and put a shawl around 
her, and she guessed she could get through with the 
music lesson somehow. 

But I wouldn’t let her. I put her to bed, and I 
went in and taught Mary Ann O’Connor myself. I 
think that young lady was afraid of me. Anyway, I 
know she was a dreadfully stupid scholar, and I won- 
dered that Effie had had patience with her so long. 
Mary Ann gave me the half-dollar at the end of the 
lesson, and I went into the bedroom and put the 


Kitty’s Jouknal. 


61 


money in Effic’s purse. She wanted me to keep the 
money, as I had given the lesson, hut I wouldn’t do 
it. Effie did not say much. I have wondered since 
if she did not think then that she should never be 
able to teach any more. Mary Ann did not come 
again. Mamma told her she had better not do so. 

Papa and mamma cried together over the little vel- 
vet purse, when mamma brought it out one noon 
after Effie died. There were between four and five 
dollars in the purse, and papa made it up to five and 
sent it to a home missionary and his wife that Effie 
used to like very much. Papa thought that would 
have pleased Effie as well as any other way of dispos- 
ing of the money would have done. 


JXJIiY 26. 

I never knew before what a terrible thing the first 
death in the family is. O, how I miss her ! It is so 
hard to go around the house and do the work, and 
feel every moment as if one could cry one’s heart out. 

Last night, after papa and mamma and I had gone 
to our rooms, I heard papa sobbing as if he could 
never stop. I suppose he did not think I could hear, 
but I did. Mamma told me afterward that he said 
he couldn’t cry in his office because some one might 


62 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

come in and find him, and he couldn’t do it on the 
street or the horse-cars when he was going to see his 
patients ; and so, when he came into his owm room, 
he felt as though he couldn’t hold out any longer. It 
seems so strange and pitiable to have papa cry, he 
has always been so dignified and self-contained. But 
I think it is a good thing that we can all cry. I be- 
lieve we should die if we did not. It is such a relief 
to me to have a room alone by myself where I can 
cry myself to sleep nights and no one can know it. 
It was dreadful, the few weeks before Eflie died, to 
have to lie down beside her every night and restrain 
every tear and sob — be as quiet as in the day-time. 
Mamma slept with her the last week, and I do not 
see how mother endured it. Of course, we had 
to be on the alert constantly if Effie wanted any 
thing. 

It is a strange thing — but I suppose an effect of my 
overwrought nerves — I see Etiie in my dreams almost 
every night. Her face is very distinct sometimes, 
and I have come to look forward to such dreams with 
a sort of pleasure, as if I really saw her again. 
Sometimes, though, she looks so sick in my dream 
that I wake up wishing I had not dreamed. Mamma 
says that, as much as she thinks about her, she never 


Kitty’s Journal. 


63 


dreams of her. I guess my brain must be in a pecul- 
iarly nervous state. 

But I am becoming seriously alarmed at the effect 
that Effie’s death is having upon father. He is be- 
coming so old and broken-down under it that mamma 
and I both feel as if we must be as cheerful as pos- 
sible before him. 

The other evening papa had been walking the 
parlor-floor till, I suppose, he felt that he could not 
endure things any longer, and he said, “ Kitty, can’t 
we have some music ? ” 

Kow, I have hardly touched the piano during these 
weeks since Efiie’s death. 1 could not bear to, we 
used to use it so much together ; but when papa said 
that I felt as if I must ; and then it was nearly dark, 
and my back would be toward the window, and I 
knew, if I did cry, I could keep my fingers going 
anyway, and no one would know. 

So I went and sat down and plaj^ed some of the 
pieces I know papa likes. Effie and I used often to 
play and sing to him on those evenings when patients 
did not keep him away from home. 

Well, I played on and on, and the tears ran down, 
but no one saw them. I didn’t trust myself to sing. 
I knew I couldn’t. But if any one had been going 


64 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


by the house and had heard me playing I suppose the 
listener would have said, ‘‘That’s the way of the 
world. Ko one cares for any one else, really. How, 
one would have supposed those Hunter girls cared for 
one another, and yet one has been in her grave only 
five or six weeks, and there’s the other one playing 
the piano as if she didn’t care at all ! ” 

0, my Journal ! I am more and more convinced 
that people do not know any thing about each 
other ! 

After I had played a while mamma went out of 
the room crying. She couldn’t bear it any longer. 

But I played on. My fingers were pretty obedient, 
if they did shake. 

In a few minutes papa said, in a trembling voice, 
“ I — I guess that will do, Kitty.” 

And my performance came to a brilliant end, if the 
listener outside had heard. 

AUGUST e. 

0, 1 wish people would let me alone I If they only 
wouldn’t talk to me ! 

I was reading Job to-day, and I declare that I can 
make his words my own ; “ I have heard many such 
things : miserable comforters are ye all. 


Kitty’s Jouenal. 


65 


Shall vain words have an end ? or what embold- 
eneth thee tliat thou answerest? 

“ I also could speak as ye do : if your soul were in 
my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, 
and shake mine head at you. 

“But I would strengthen you with my mouth, 
and the moving of my lips should assuage your 
grief.” 

I believe I know just how Job felt when he burst 
out in those words. I don’t know that I should be 
able to “ strengthen ” anj^ body, but I do believe I 
should see when it was best to hold my tongue and 
not torment people who were in trouble. 

AUGUST 13. 

What do you suppose Effie and I will say about it 
to each other when we see one another again ? 

W ill she say to me, “ O, I knew I was dying ! All 
those months I knew it. And I could not tell you. 
I could not bear to tell you. Don’t you know, we al- 
ways said we would stay with one another all the days 
of our lives? And I couldn’t keep my part of the 
promise. I felt myself going, day after day. When 
did you first know it, and what did you do ? ” 

Ko, I do not believe she will say that. We shall 
5 


66 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

not talk there about dying. It will seem too small a 
thing. 

I read some lines yesterday that I have thought a 
great deal about. It was a saying of Dr. James 
Hamilton: “Few mercies call for greater thankful- 
ness than a friend safe in heaven. It is not every 
one that overcometh.” 

I suppose tJiat is true. I do not know how people 
can part from those of their families wlio are not 
Christians. I do not suppose that I am half tliankful 
enough that Eflie was prepared to go, and tliat all 
anxiety for her is over. All we have to endure is our 
own grief, and though that is almost unendurable at 
times, still it is nothing compared with what it would 
be if we did not believe that she is happy. 

One of our neighbors, a well-meaning but rather 
weak-minded woman, was 'waiting in the house for us 
wdien we came back from the funeral, and as mamma 
lay sobbing on tlie lounge the woman came to her 
and said, “O, now don’t — don’t, Mrs. Hunter. You 
must remember that you’re the mother of an angel 
now.” 

And, though I do not agree with the woman, that 
those who believe in Christ turn to angels in heaven, 
still I appreciate, in part at least, the comfort that the 


Kitty’s Journal. 


67 


woman meant to give mamma in tlie assurance that 
EfSe is safe. 

I wonder if we were too happy together, we four ? 
I wonder if God saw that we were in danger of 
thinking so much of our earthly home as to forget 
our heavenly one? 

1 do not know. I am sure that heaven is a differ- 
ent place to me since Eflle is there. This is what I 
read the other day about people who never have any 
trouble : 

“But however pleasing such scenes of prosperity, 
and however ardently we cling to worldly comforts, 
it is a fact, confirmed by general experience, that a 
long continuance of such a state is not favorable to 
the growth of piety. The heart hardens in this con- 
tinual sunshine. Imperceptibly we lose the abiding, 
practical sense of our entire dependence and weak- 
ness, and are prone to say, like the royal Psalmist, 
‘My mountain stands strong. I shall never be 
moved.’ ” 

I found another idea in the same book in which I 
read what I have just quoted. The words are these ; 
“ And as here knowledge is acquired by the aid of 
instructors, why may not the same be the fact in 
heaven ? What a delightful employment to the saints 


68 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


who have been drinking in the knowledge of God 
and his works for thousands of years, to communicate 
instruction to the saint just arrived ! ” 

Is that what Effie will do? It seems to me it 
would be just like her to say to herself, I will tell 
them of this beautiful thing, I will make them under- 
stand that other thing, when they come.” 

Of course, tliere is no use in wondering about it. 
Still, one would like to know. It seems strange to 
me that the Bible does not tell us more about heaven. 
Perhaps, though, if it did, we should so much want 
to go there that we should neglect all we have to do 
here. But whatever Effie has to say, whether of re- 
membrances of this world, or of wonderful things in 
the next, I am sure I shall listen, when I see her 
ag^in. 

AUQXrST 14. 

We have hung the picture of Christ and John in 
the parlor. We cannot bear to put the picture away 
as we have so many of Effie’s things. 

Mamma offered Mr. Dayton the picture back again, 
but he saw how she felt about it, and he said, “Ko; 
keep it. You will care more for it than any one 
else.” 


Kitty’s Jotjenal. 


69 


Whicli was a very kind thing for Mr. Dayton to 
say, and I feel much obliged to him. For we really 
did not want to lose it. I can’t bear to look at it 
now, but I know I shall want it by and by. Papa 
caught sight of it the other evening, and he went 
into his room, and mamma said he cried terribly. 

But still, none of us want it put away. It would 
seem like losing so much more of Effie. 

Mamma and I have gathered up her crochet- 
needles, and her lace-work and embroidery, and the 
bright silks she used to work with, and her Bible and 
cards, and her little trinkets, and have put them all 
away. Her needle, threaded with scarlet silk, is in a 
piece of work just where she left it, and her little 
ring is in its box, where she put it one day when 
her finger had grown so thin that the ring troubled 
her, slipping off. It was like living every thing over 
again to have to find all those things and put them 
away ; but it was better to do it, for otherwise we 
should have been coming across them unexpectedly, 
and that might have made us feel worse. 

I took the three pictures that Effie cut out that 
last day. I could not bear to give them away as she 
had intended, but we put them in the box with her 
things. I am going to take other pictures and make 


TO A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

a scrap-book for the children in the hospital that Mr. 
Dayton told Effie about. She wanted to do that. 
May be, that way, I can do something for her still. 

AUGUST so. 

Some folks have queer ideas about comforting 
people. I thought I had endured just about every 
thing from people who would talk to me about Effie, 
but I hadn’t endured one thing, and that came to-day. 

Papa came in this noon and brought the mail, as 
usual. There was a letter for me. I knew it was 
addressed in Mr. Dayton’s handwriting, and I won- 
dered what he had to say that should require a letter. 
It seemed to me that I had seen him enough times 
lately for him to make me all the communications 
necessary. 

Well, I tore the envelope and opened the sheet. 
There were only three lines of writing on the first 
page, but when I read them I dropped into a chair. 
They were these : 

^‘Miss Kittie Hunter^ 

“ Dear Friend : Do you not think that it is about 
time that your and my life-work should join ? ” 

Mother came into the room just then, and pa had 
gone out, so I, as soon as I could get my astonished 


Kitty’s Journal. 71 

breath, gasped out, ‘‘ O, ma, ma, Mr. Dayton wants 
to marry me ! ” 

“ Why — why, I guess not,” said ma, looking as if 
she thought I had lost my wits. 

She came to me, though, and together we read the 
other page of the letter. It said that he had thought 
it best to write only that question on the front page, 
and he desired me to write my answer below the 
question and send the sheet back. He hoped that 
before marrying him I would “ ask the Lord about 
it,” and would “ consult my parents.” 

Ma and I sat, in blank amazement, staring at one 
another when we had finished reading that letter. 
And then pa came in, and we sat down to lunch 
witliout having had a chance to say a word to one 
another about Mr. Dayton’s unexpected perform- 
ance. 

Pa, of course, didn’t know a thing about it, and he 
tried to talk cheerfull}^, the way he always has tried 
ever since Effie died. Seems to me we miss her more 
at the table than anywhere else. I catch myself put- 
ting on four plates and napkins and knives and forks, 
so often, and then I hurry one set off, so that ma wont 
see and be reminded of the empty place at our table. 
Of course she thinks of it all the time, though. I 


72 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

believe it is as much as any of us can do to get 
through a meal and not break down. 

But it was all I could do to endure lunch, I 
wanted to cry so. Hot about Effie, but about tliat 
letter. And I was so angry with myself to think that 
a letter from such a source should make me cry. 
And I was so angry with Mr. Dayton. To think he 
should dare write me such a letter ! 

“ Haven’t I snubbed him time and time again ? ” 
demanded I of myself, as I wrathfully cut my meat. 
“ Haven’t I treated him abominably ? Haven’t we 
all fairly insulted him sometimes, we were so tired of 
him ? And now all he wants is to become one of 
the family, so that he can make pa support him 
all the time. Wont pa be mad when he knows it! ” 

And I glanced at my unconscious parent as he 
drank his coffee. 

“ Wouldn’t it be awful 1 ” I went on to myself, as 
a picture of Mr. Dayton sitting opposite me arose in 
my mind. “ What a husband he would make ! 
More than sixty years old — spectacles, false teeth, 
white hair, with a lot of ‘ poems ’ in his pocket ! I 
don’t wonder that the first Mrs. Dayton died. How 
she ever lived at all is a mystery. Poor soul ! ” 

My Journal, I don’t know that I have ever men- 


Kitty’s Journal. 


73 


tioned to you the fact that there was a former Mrs. 
Dayton. But it is true. Papa and mamma used to 
know her. And they were sorry for her too, I think. 
She died a good many years ago. I know that at 
that time Mr. Dayton told ma that he should never 
marry again. He has changed his mind, it seems. I 
presume, if I should marry Mr. Dayton, he would be 
perfectly willing that I should go out scrubbing to 
support us both, and once in a while, when I was so 
tired working that I could hardly stand, he would 
probably open the door and stand there dressed in his 
best clothes, and would say, “Dear Kitty, will you 
listen to a few lines of poetry that the Lord has given 
me?” 

And I am afraid that dear Kitty ” would arise in 
wrath about that moment. 

When I had thought as far as this I left the table, 
and when pa and ma were through, and I was clear- 
ing off the table, I handed ma the letter, and she 
went into the parlor and told pa, while 1 went into 
the kitchen and washed dishes so vigorously that I 
dropped a pile of saucers and broke three of them. 

Pa didn’t say any thing when he came out to kiss 
me good-bye, as he always does before going to the 
office. But I looked into his eyes and I saw some- 


74 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


tiling in them tliat assured me that Mr. Dajton will 
never see the inside of this house again. Ma told me 
afterward that papa is going to answer that letter 
himself. I’m so glad ! 

“ But, do you know,” said ma, as I shut the cup- 
board door, I believe that is Mr. Dayton’s way of 
expressing sympathy for you, because you have lost 
your sister.” 

“If Mr. Dayton, or any one else, thinks he can 
take Eftie’s place — ” I began. 

And then my varied emotions overcame me, and I 
ran upstairs and had “ a good cry.” 

SEPTEMBER 2. 

I cut this scrap out of a newspaper the other day. 
I suppose that once I would have passed it over and 
not read it through. It is from a poem called 
“ Gethsemane.” 

“All those who journey, soon or late, 

Must pass within the garden’s gate, 

Must kneel alone in darkness there 
And battle with some fierce despair. 

God pity those who cannot say — 

‘Not mine, but thine; ’ who only pray, 

‘ Let this cup pass,’ and cannot see 
The purpose in Gethsemane. 

Gethsemane, Gethsemane, 

God help us through Gethsemane 1” 


Kitty’s Journal. 


75 


SSPTZnSiOEH. 16 . 

“ Why weren’t you out at the literary society last 
niglit ? ” 

This is what Mrs, Bennett said when she met me 
on the street this morning. 

“ Tliere were only a few there, and we wanted you 
to play for us,” she went on. 

I looked at her in amazement. Did she think I could 
forget about Effie so soon ? Why, it seems to me it 
would almost kill me to go to that literary society 
and see that piano standing in one corner and tliink 
how many times Effie and I have played duets on it. 
And as for taking my flute, and standing up in that 
corner and seeing some one’s else fingers playing 
accompaniments for me, I just couldn’t endure that ! 

“ I don’t believe I’ll go any more,” I said. ‘‘ I’m 
going to hand in my resignation.” 

Mrs. Bennett gave a little shriek of horror. 

“ You dreadful child ! ” she said. “ How can you 
be so unkind ! Why, I was relying on you to play 
at the next ‘ sociable.’ It’s going to be at my house, 
you know.” 

And then, to my great relief, Mrs. Bennett’s horse- 
car came along and she left me. 

Has Mrs. Bennett never known what it is to have 


76 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

any one die, I wonder ? How can she think that I 
feel like going to socials, and laughing, and having a 
good time ? 

I don’t mean to let Effie’s death make me bitter or 
exclusive, or any thing wrong, but I must have time 
to get over the shock. I can’t feel the wa}^ I did 
before. Hotliing is the same. Hothing ever will be 
the same again. But I suppose that some day, some 
time, I shall be able to control myself enough so that 
I can go among people and appear as cheerful as any 
one. All people seem to be able to do such things 
after a while. But I don’t believe people ever really 
feel the same again. And I know it will be a long, 
long time before I can be sure of being perfectly self- 
controlled under all circumstances. It is all I can do 
now, sometimes, to listen to some of the hymns in 
church. 

But I have begun teaching my Sabbath-school 
class again. I thought I would better do so, as it 
has been rather hard work to keep some of them 
attending regularly, and I was afraid that, if their 
teacher were gone too long, some of them might 
take occasion to stay away altogether. The little 
girls looked quite sober when they first saw me in 
black, but, before the lesson was over, they had 


Kitty’s Journal. 


77 


recovered their spirits, and it was just about as hard 
work as it usually is to keep them interested. 

And now they’re so used to the sight of me that 
they don’t mind the black at all. I went around 
hunting some missing scholars yesterday. Seems to 
me that I have pretty hard work to keep my girls 
coming regularly. One woman confessed to me that 
her daughter had been going to a dentist for two 
Sundays, and that is the reason why the girl hasn’t 
appeared in my Sabbath-school class. The woman 
said the dentist is a particular friend of her folks, and 
he couldn’t do the work on any other day but Sun- 
day. What can one say to such people ? 

And the mother of another of my girls appeared 
quite friendly, and held a long conversation with me 
about currant jelly and other eatables, but she 
wouldn’t promise to make the girl come regularly 
to Sabbath-school. The woman said that her daugh- 
ter had “so much company.” Well, why can’t she 
bring her company with her to the class ? I’m sure 
I would try to make it as interesting as I could. 

One of my girls told me in class that she hadn’t 
read in the Bible for a week because she had been 
away visiting. 

As I thought over all these things on my way 


78 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

home I felt quite discouraged. It seemed to me that 
I never had had quite so hard a class to manage as 
this one has been. And just then I remembered 
what Adam Bede says : There’s many a good bit of 
work done with a sad heart.” 

I suppose that is true. But it’s rather discourag- 
ing to study the lessons as hard as I do and then to 
find such scholars to hear it. I’m afraid that I’m 
not a very good Sabbath-school teacher. 

SEPTEMBER 17. 

Papa did answer that letter. He wrote a fearful 
reply. I had no idea he could say things so savage. 
I saw the letter in papa’s office. He had written tlie 
letter, and invited ma and myself to come in and see 
it before he sent it off. 

So, when we went in, papa handed mamma the 
letter, and went off out of his back door. Papa 
hasn’t said a word to me about Mr. Dayton, and 3 "et 
papa’s dreadfully angry inside, I know. His letter 
sounded so. He reminded Mr. Dayton how, years 
ago, when Mrs. Dayton was with him, she almost 
starved because he wouldn’t work. Papa told Mr. 
Dayton he was a lazy man, and that he (papa) would 
rather see me lying dead beside my sister than living 


Kitty’s Journal. 


79 


as the second Mrs. Dajton. And, furthermore, papa 
said that he should forbid Mr. Dayton’s ever coming 
near the house again. And, at the end, papa had 
written, ‘‘My daughter needs no conference with 
her parents in order to decide about this matter. 
She fully agrees with all I have written.” 

Of course I did “ agree.” 

Papa told mamma, though, that he made the letter 
worse than ever afterward. I don’t see, myself, how 
it could have been any worse. But papa has been so 
disgusted with Mr. Dayton for so long a time, and 
has been so unable to get rid of the man, that I guess 
he was almost glad to get an opportunity to write 
down all that he had ever tliouglit. 

Mr. Dayton will probably cry a little over that 
letter, and then compose a hymn suitable for the 
occasion. Anyway, I shall not be around to hear 
him read his production. That is a comfort. 

Mr. Dayton always lives in hope that some day he 
may write a hymn that will be sung universally by 
the churches ; some such hymn as “ Kock of Ages,” 
or “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” I heard Mr. Dayton 
say once that if he could do such a thing as that he 
would be perfectly satisfied. He could think of no 
grander thing to do. 


80 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


Well, such a thing is grand. But I don’t believe 
that such hymns proceed from any thing but the 
most sanctified common sense. And, however 
good Mr. Dayton may be, his common sense is cer- 
tainly missing. 

DECEMBER 20. 

It is the first Christmas without her. O, I wish 
Thanksgiving and Christmas wouldn’t come around 
any more ! I went to the church and tried to help 
the girls trim for Christmas eve, but I hadn’t any 
heart in it. I was on the committee, though, so I 
had to help. I didn’t want the other girls to know 
how I felt. 

And we hung up our stockings just the same as 
usual at home, and we never said any thing to one 
another about things being any different. And we 
thanked each other for the presents, and we pre- 
tended to be happy, and Pve no doubt that each 
of us thought about Eflfie all day and cried about 
her at night. We are queer folks, we Hunters! 

JAITOARY 1. 

The Hew-year bells rang at midnight, of course, 
and they woke me. 

Eflie and I used to always wake at that time, nudge 


Kitty’s Journal. 


81 


each other, say “Happy Kew-year,” and go off to 
sleep again as soon as the bells would let us. 

And so, last night, when I woke alone, I lay and 
cried long after the bells had stopped. 

I never used to think that people did such things. 
I wonder how many people in this town felt as I did 
last night. I suppose that a good many heard those 
bells with sorrow instead of joy. I know of some 
people who must have done so. And to think that I 
used to believe that every body was perfectly happy 
on Christmas and Kew-year! That’s all that chil- 
dren know about the inside of life. 

JUNE 11. 

It was one year’ ago yesterday that Effie died. 
Papa and mamma and I rode to the cemetery and 
covered her grave with flowers. We have on the 
little stone those lines that she wrote in that girl’s 
album : 

“ When trial comes upon thee 
And doth thy heart with sorrow fill, 

Remember One above thee 
Can comfort tliee in every ill.” 

I suppose Effie would be surprised if she knew that 
that was cut on her stone. But we didn’t know what 

else to put there, and we would rather have that than 
6 


82 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

the inscriptions that are used so often. However, I 
was reading in Hawthorne the other day, and I found 
what the old sexton said about the common inscrip- 
tions. It was this, “ There is a good deal of comfort 
to be gathered from these little old scraps of poetry ; 
and so I always recommend them in preference to 
any new-fangled ones. And somehow, they seem to 
stretch to suit a great grief, and shrink to suit a 
small one.” 

May be they do, but we thought we would rather 
have something that Effie wrote herself. 

I have been somewhat amused lately in reading 
the obituary “ poetry ” that appears in the city papers. 
I think the Irish people of the city must have hired 
some amateur “ poet ” to furnish them with rhymes 
to suit occasions. At least there have been an un- 
usual number of rhymes lately in connection with 
death notices. Here is one I cut out the other day : 

“ Under the sod we have laid him to rest, 

As honest a young man as ever God blessed ; 

And if for the wise and the good there is rest, 

Then Patrick is surely at home with the blest.” 

I saw the same piece of “ poetry” afterward under 
another notice, with the name “ Joseph,” instead of 
‘‘ Patrick.” 


Kitty’s Journal. 


83 


Here is another, under the death notice of a man 
from “ County Cork.” 

“ Gone, papa, gone. 

You will suffer now no more ; 

You have gone to meet our brother 
In that bright, golden shore. 

“ Gone, papa, gone, 

Your sufferings are o’er, 

And you leave nine children 
To offer up their constant prayer.” 

This gem was signed “ Widow and Children,” 
though I have my doubts whether the ten ever man- 
aged to evolve such lines from their united brains. 
It sounds to me very much as though a sympathizing 
friend wrote the lines, and the Widow and Chil- 
dren” signed them. Here is still another: 

“We laid our dear father one away, 

No more his precious form we see, 

Part of our lives died the day 
His mortal being passed away.” 

This one is rather mixed as to figures of speech : 

“ This lovely bird, so young, so fair. 

Called hence to early doom. 

Just came to show how sweet a flower 
In Paradise would bloom. 

“ She was but a smile. 

Which glistens in a tear. 

Seen but a little while. 

But 0 ! how loved, how dear.” 


84 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

And here is one that was printed when one of the 
tribe of Smith died : 

“ Weep not for me, my wife and children dear, 

I toiled for you for many a year ; 

I always strove to do my best, 

And now I’m gone to take my rest.” 


This one was signed “ By His Sister,” so I hope 
she was not guilty of plagiarism, but it sounds to me 
like an epitaph from some old tombstone ; 

“ It was at my work I met my death, 

And in my youth resigned my breath ; 

It was an accident, you know, 

But Grod had set my time to go. 

Young men, prepare while in your prime. 

Tour life may be as short as mine.” 

Far be it from me to ridicule the grief that tries 
to honor the dead by paying for the printing of such 
lines. But I never read such things without think- 
ing of what Joe Gargery says, in Dickens Great 
Expectations : 

•‘‘And it were my intentions to have had put 
upon his tombstone that Whatsume’er the failings on 
his part Bemernber reader he were that good in his 
hart.’ 

“ Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride 


Kitty’s Journal. 


85 


and careful perspicuity, that I asked him if he had 
made it himself. 

“ ‘I made it,’ said Joe, ‘my own self. I made it 
in a moment. It was like striking out a horseshoe 
complete, in a single blow. I never was so much 
surprised in all my life — couldn’t credit my own ’ed ; 
to tell you the truth, hardly believed it were my 
own ’ed.’ ” 

One would think, to read all the nonsense that I 
have written here, that it was not a very sober visit 
that we paid to the cemetery yesterday. But it was. 
Only I dare not give way to the feelings that came 
over me. Mamma and I must be cheerful, or I don’t 
know what will become of papa. There seems to be 
a sort of settled melancholy that has laid hold of 
him, a hopeless dreariness that I am afraid of. He 
does not seem to be able to shake it off. 

So mamma and I cheered him as much as we could 
as we rode home yesterday. I quoted that “ Patrick ” 
epitaph, and papa said he thought it must have been 
made by some one who could say, with Sir Lawrence 
Tanfield’s widow, of Oxfordshire : 

“ Love made me poott, 

4nd this I writt ; 

My heart did do it, 

And not my witte.” 


86 A Piece of Kitiy Hunter’s Life. 

As that was the most cheerful remark that I have 
heard papa make of late, I felt quite encouraged. But 
his cheerfulness did not last long. 

He seems to cling to mamma and me, nowadays, 
in such fashion that it often brings the tears into my 
eyes. It is as though he has some way changed from 
a strong, self-reliant man to one shrinking from con- 
tact with the world, and turning for comfort to the few 
left him at home. 

And he forgets things so easily, now. 1 don’t ask 
him any more to remember and bring things home 
from down-town. I go myself and get them with- 
out troubling him. I think that his mind is so full 
of grief that he cannot remember little things. He 
seemed to try to, for a while, but I could see that it 
mortified him to feel that he forgot, and so I don’t 
trouble him any more, but do the errands myself. 

SEPTEMBER 10. 

I’ve been trying as hard as I can to think of some- 
thing I can do to earn some money. Hot that I 
specially need it, but I don’t like to stay home and 
not earn any thing. I haven’t any music scholars, 
and don’t know where to look for any. And going 
off to teach school is utterly out of the question 
now. Mamma needs me, and I think papa does too. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


87 


It takes very little to break papa down now. A 
week or two ago he was summoned as a witness in a 
suit in a town about a hundred miles south of here. 
Papa used to know the defendant, I believe, and was 
summoned to testify about some case of sickness in 
the family. Of course papa had to go. It took 
only a few days, but he was the most homesick 
man before he could get back ! Why, when he 
came into the house he caught mamma in his arms 
and kissed her and cried over her, and then he 
found me, and put his arms around me, and cried 
over me, till I thought he never would stop. He 
said he felt all the time he was gone as thougli 
mother and I were both dead, and he should never 
see either of us again. 

The poor man ! I never saw him so nervous. I’m 
glad he is home, and I do hope he wont have to go 
off anywhere again to stay. I suppose being away 
made him wonder what in the world he should do 
if mamma and I should die. ^ 

Papa was sixty his last birthday. Some way, ever 
since then, he has seemed to look upon himself as an 
old man. I have several times heard him refer to 
himself as being “so old.” Why, I’m sure sixty 
isn’t old at all I Grandpa was more than twenty-five 


88 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

years older than that when he died, and I don’t see 
why papa shouldn’t live to be as old as his father. 

But, of course, when papa depends so much on mam- 
ma and me it wouldn’t do at all for me to go away 
from home. Some one told me the other day that our 
religious paper pays for stories for the children’s 
page. I’ve been revolving that idea in my mind 
ever since. 

Papa likes to have mamma or me go with him 
when he goes to visit his patients. One of us can 
sit in the buggy and hold the horse while papa is in 
seeing sick folks, and then he has some one to talk to 
while he drives from one house to another. So 
mamma and I have plenty of waiting to do, and 
while we wait, we usually read. 

But yesterday I wrote. I sat in the buggy all 
alone, and I thought and wrote and scratched out 
and wrote over till I had it as I wanted it, and till 
papa’s calls were all over. And I wrote some more 
at night, and some more to-day, and the story is 
done, and I’ve just mailed it. May be it isn’t good 
enough for that paper, but I’m going to try and see 
if it isn’t. It sounds to me as good as those that are 
printed in the paper, but may be I’m partial to my 
productions. Anyway, I’ve worked so hard over that 


Kitty’s Journal. 


89 


story that I can’t tell really how it would strike 
a person who had never seen it before. 

I’ve been cutting and pasting all day, trying to 
finish another scrap-book. I want to send it to 
the girls’ Fruit and Flower Mission in the city. The 
girls wrote to me after I sent them some scrap-books 
of my making, and said that the books were just 
what they wanted for the hospitals. I made the books 
small and light, most of them, so it wouldn’t tire a 
sick person to hold one long enough to read it. 

During these months since Effie died I have made 
a good many scrap-books, from things that she left, 
for the hospitals in the city. 1 thought Effie would 
like to have me carry out her idea. I think I am at 
work now on my fourteenth scrap-book. I use pict- 
ures and tracts and stories and religious articles. 

Lately a girl suggested to me that I make scrap- 
books for sailors as well as for hospitals. There are 
a good many ships leaving the city for all quarters of 
the earth. I believe I’ll try. The idea 1 May be Effie 
in that way might do good to some sailor thousands 
of miles away from here ! She would be glad if she 
knew that. 

Papa says he will give me one of his old leather- 
covered ledgers for a sailor scrap-book. That will be 


90 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

stout, and will stand a good deal of handling. The 
girl who suggested sailor-books says the men on 
shipboard read every thing they can get hold of dur- 
ing the long voyages. If that is so, may be the men 
will read all the religious things I mean to put into 
that scrap-book. 

OCTOBEB 4. 

I received a letter to-day from the woman who is 
head of that story-page of our religious paper. She 
has accepted my story, and is going to print it next 
week. She says her paper doesn’t pay for the first 
story accepted from a contributor, but pays for the 
next sent. She said she liked my story, and she hoped 
I’d write again, and if I do I’ll get pay. This time 
all she sent me was a little book on punctuation. She 
didn’t like the way I divided the paragraphs in my 
story. 

I feel quite joyful over getting into print, anyway, 
even if there isn’t any pay just now. I am going to 
write another story for her. It’s going to be about 
a cat I had once. I tied a rope around its neck, and 
the cat ran off, and I couldn’t find her, and I felt dread- 
fully. And after a couple of weeks or so that cat 
came back as thin as a shadow almost. She had been 


Kitty’s Journal. 


91 


caught by that rope somewhere, and couldn’t get 
away. That isn’t all the story, but I’m going to fix 
it so that I know that woman will like it. I prayed 
about that cat, and thought that was the cause of its 
coming back. 

NOVEMBER 6. 

During the year and a half since Effie’s death I 
have made fifty scrap-books, counting big and little 
ones. A good many have been sent to hospitals. I 
got some French tracts, and fixed up a book for the 
French hospital in the city. A good many more 
books have gone on the vessels. I know of some 
scrap-books that sailors have taken to Germany, and 
I know of others that have sailed for Alaska. But, 
wherever in this world those books are, I hope tliey 
are doing good. I think Effie would be glad if she 
knew how her idea is being carried ont. Perhaps 
she does know. I do not find any thing in the Bible 
that seems to be against such an idea. FTeither do I 
find much in favor of it. Still, I like to think that 
perhaps she does know. 

If she does not know now she will some time, for 
I shall tell her. I shall not forget to do that, I am 
certain. 


92 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


NOVEMBEB 18. 

That woman did like my second story. She is 
going to send me three dollars for it. She pays the 
first of every month. 

Mamma showed papa my two stories Sunday night. 
He had been so busy all the week that he had had no 
time to look at the stories. Besides, he has been al- 
most sick. He has caught a dreadful cold. Mamma 
has been afraid he would have pneumonia. He has 
managed to lie down half an hour or so every noon, 
but he really ought to stop work and go to bed. But 
he says his patients need him. 

He was greatly pleased by the two stories. He 
read them straight through, and evidently thought he 
had a wonderful daughter. But he always thinks 
that, anyway. If I were not used to my father he 
would spoil me sometimes. 

“ I don’t know where she gets it,” he said, as he 
looked admiringly at my two papers spread out on 
his knees. “ I’m sure I never could write a story. 
They’re far beyond me.” 

The idea ! when I’ve seen in medical magazines ar- 
ticles written by him, which were so learned that I 
couldn’t understand half they meant ; articles that 
I’ve heard city doctors praise in unmeasured terms! 


Kitiy’s Journal. 


93 


They’re beautiful stories,” said lie, as he wiped 
his eyes. ‘‘We’ve got a genius in the house, wifie.” 

And he came over and bent down and kissed me. 
Then he went off to sec a sick baby. 

My Journal, if tlie highest and mightiest editor in 
the United States had condescended to accept and 
praise any production of mine I do not think it would 
have made me any happier than to see papa so pleased 
and proud over those two little stories that most read- 
ers will probably skip ; because, no matter how much 
the high and mighty editor might praise, I should 
know that lie didn’t really care any thing about me, 
and my father does. Sha’n’t I feel proud when I show 
him those three dollars ! They will look bigger to 
him than three hundred of his own earning, and he 
will rejoice more over my having them than over any 
possible good fortune that might come to him. 

That’s the way it has always been in our liouse. 
No wonder it makes such a vacancy in our household 
to have one of us four taken. Even now, Sunday 
afternoons, I have to be very careful what hymns I 
pick out for our singing. I used to think w'e never 
could sing any more Sundays, because we always did 
it for an hour or so when Effie was here. But papa 
would walk the floor and not seem to know what to 


94 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


do with himself when singing-time came, and so, 
gradually, we came back to the old custom. And it 
doesn’t hurt me now so much to do it, but still I 
don’t pick out certain hymns. We don’t sing, Shall 
we Gather at the Kiver?” and other hymns about 
heaven, because, although it is almost a year and a 
half since Effie went away from us, yet it often seems 
as though it were but yesterday, and I know we 
couldn’t get through some hymns very well. There 
is one hymn we almost always sing, and that is, “ How 
firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord ” — that old 
Portuguese Hymn.” Pa likes that. I don’t know 
why he likes it so much.^ I think, may be, grandpa 
and grandma used to sing it. That may be the rea- 
son. But papa sings it like every thing ; and there’s 
another one he sings that way. It’s that old one 
of Wesley’s, “Come, let us anew our journey pur- 
sue.” Papa sings that to the queerest old-fashioned 
tune. I haven’t the music, but I’ve picked the thing 
out on the piano, and sometimes, when I want to 
please papa, I start that hymn just before we finish 
singing. 

I wonder if, sometimes, up in heaven, we shall not 
find ourselves humming such hymns. I don’t see 
how we can quite forget them, even there. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


n 

WEDITESDAT, NOVEMBER 22. 

I am glad mamma showed him my story that night ; 
for, if she had not, he would never have seen it. 

I hardly know liow to write the things that have 
occurred in this house the last few days. 

Monday morning papa took mamma to ride when 
he went to see his patients. She says that he seemed 
to be pretty well, only tired, but she noticed that he 
hardly paid attention to his driving, and several times 
she had to touch the reins in order to make the horse 
turn out for the carriages they met. 

But neither of us noticed any thing different from 
usual in his appearance at noon. He came in, lay 
down a little while, ate his lunch, kissed us both as 
he always did on leaving the house, and went off 
down-town. Of course we did not expect to see him 
again till evening. 

When supper-time came every thing was ready. 
At half-past six mamma looked up at the clock, and she 
said, “I guess he must have some patient that is 
detaining him. He’s late.” 

The meat became cold, and we put things back on 
the stove to keep them warm, for, as mamma said, a 
man wouldn’t want a cold meal after being out in 
this November air. 


96 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

But, of course, we have always been used to having 
papa detained, so we did not think any thing of it. 
Seven, eiglit, nine o’clock came. We had read the 
evening paper, and w^ere both tired with the day’s 
work. 

“ Such an ironing as we have to do to-morrow,” I 
said, sleepily, glancing at the clock. “ I believe I 
will go to bed.” 

“I would,” said ma, looking up from her book. 
“ I’m going myself pretty soon. There’s no use 
sitting up, I suppose, but I’ll wait a little longer. He 
might possibly come and want his supper. He must 
have some new patient. I didn’t know that any of 
the others were so very sick. I do hope he hasn’t 
bad to go away over the mountain. I should have 
thought he would have come and told us before doins: 
that, though.” 

“ I’m dreadfully tired,” I yawned. “ I can’t hold 
my eyes open.” ^ 

So I went to bed. I w^as so tired that I dropped to 
sleep in a few minutes. 

The next thing I knew, some one was speaking to 
me and waking me out of a sound sleep. 

I could hardly collect my senses, at first. There 
was a light in the room, and by it, when I opened 


Kitty’s Journal. 


97 


mj eyes, I saw a woman’s face. It seemed to me I 
had seen that face before. Was it my mother ! Ko. 
Then my sleepy vision cleared, and I knew that it 
was my aunt. Why was she there ? Had she come 
a mile in the night ? 

I sprang up with sudden fear. Something must 
have happened. 

“ What is it ? ” I gasped. “ Is it mamma ? ” 

I don’t know what made me think that. 

Aunt covered her face with her hands. She could 
hardly speak. 

“ Your father — ” she said, and stopped. 

“ Is he dead ? ” I cried. 

‘‘Y^es,” she said, hardly able to speak the word. 
Poor soul, I can think how hard it was for her to 
have to bring me the news. How much she must 
have dreaded waking me when she saw me lying 
there asleep, unconscious of the dreadful tidings she 
liad to tell. 

“ I’ll get right up,” I said ; and, as my aunt turned to 
leave the room I managed to say, “ How is mamma ? ” 

“ She is very calm,” aunt said. 

And then she went down-stairs. And I — I caught 
hold of the closet door, and I trembled from head to 

foot so that I could hardly stand. 

7 


98 


.A Piece of Kitty IIuntek’s Life. 


O, it’s come ! it’s come ! ” I whispered to mjself. 
“ O God, help me ! ” 

I don’t know how I dressed myself. I know I 
shook so I could hardly do any thing, and yet I 
wanted to go down-stairs to mamma. 

At last I w'as ready, all but my hair, and I let that 
hang in its braid, for I couldn’t wait any longer. I 
hurried down. 

In the parlor, in a chair, sat mamma, white as death, 
and I went to her and put my arms around hei’, and 
kissed her. 

O, mamma,” I cried, “ he has seen Effie ! ” 

And then I went down on my knees beside her, 
and hid my face on her shoulder. 

And the next tiling I knew the room was iillino^ 
w’ith people, and the minister came in and put his 
hand on my head, and a neighbor came to us and 
made us go away into one of the back rooms, for the 
men had come with papa’s body. 

They laid him in the sewing-room, and after a 
while they let mamma and me go in and see him. 
He looked just as if he were asleep. The doctors who 
had been called said that he died in sleep, and prob- 
ably had no pain at all. 

Ma put her head down on him and cried in a sort 


Kitty’s Journal. 


99 


of hysterical way, and one of the neighbors said, “ O, 
don’t cry, don’t cry. He is better off.” 

I suppose I shocked that neighbor dreadfully, for 
I said, ‘‘Just let her cry. She will feel better.” 

The horrified look that neighbor gave me ! I sup- 
pose she thought that I had said something perfectly 
heartless. But I didn’t mean it that way. I couldn’t 
bear to have mamma take things so calmly, because I 
was afraid of the effect upon her. And when I saw that 
the sight of papa made her cry even a little I was so 
thankful ! 

Hothing could be done. He was really dead. The 
coroner had been summoned before the men brought 
papa home, and the doctors had all said that he was 
dead. And yet he did look so alive, lying there 
with his eyes closed. And yet his forehead was so 
cold, when I put my hand on it. 

I walked the floor till two o’clock in the morning, 
and then mamma reminded me that we were keeping 
aunt’s -folks up all night. So mamma and I went up- 
stairs and lay down on the bed, and I lay awake till 
morning. 

And the next day people began to come to the 
house. And O, such things as they said ! They were 
trying to comfort us, of course, but there isn’t any 


ibO A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

thing comforting that human beings can say at such 
a time. God is the only Comforter, and I don’t think 
people need suppose they can help much about it. 
What good does it do to say, ‘‘ You must be resigned,” 
and “ He is better ofF,” and He’s in a better world ? ” 
There was only one person who came who said a sen- 
sible thing to me, and that was an Irish girl. She 
had lost her father, and perhaps that is what made 
her know what to do. At any rate, all she did when 
she came was just to put her arms around me, and 
kiss me and say, “ I’m so sorry for you.” 

And, after all, that is all people can do — just to be 
sorry for one another. But I knew that girl meant 
what she said, or it wouldn’t have done me any good. 

Mamma told me . that she had not gone to bed that 
night. She kept sitting up, some way, and she was 
just thinking that she would go to bed when the 
door-bell rang, and she went there and found the min- 
ister and he told her that something had happened 
to papa. 

She said that she would go directly down to the 
office to him, but the minister would not let her. 

JSTo,” said he. “ It is no place for you. Tliey are 
bringing him home.” 

And then the neighbors and auntie came in, and 


Kitty’s Journal. 


101 


some of them, when they found that I was asleep, 
said that they had better wait till morning before 
telling me. 

But mamma said, “ Ko, tell her now.” 

And I am so glad they did, because the blow would 
not have been any easier in the morning, and, besides, 
mamma needed me. 

We buried him to-day, and to-night I thought I 
might as well write it all down as sit and think about 
it, and rehearse it all in my mind. 

The doctors came from the medical society and 
acted as pall-bearers, marching beside the hearse 
from our house to the church. And there was a 
great crowd of people, and after the service every 
body went around and looked at poor papa, and then 
every body stared while mamma and I and the rest of 
the relatives went to the coffin. I wish outsiders 
wouldn’t stand and look on at such times. 

And then we took the long ride to the cemetery, 
and papa was buried in the same lot that Effie lies in. 
One of the doctors wanted to see over the shoulders 
of the other people, and so he stepped upon Effie’s 
grave. I don’t suppose he thought at all what he 
was doing, but I wasn’t going to have him standing 
perched there. I didn’t know him at all, but he 


102 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

couldn’t see me through my black veil, and I turned 
to him and said, “You are standing on a grave.” 

And the doctor, whoever he was, looked at me a 
minute, and then he actually turned red and stepped 
down. 

May be it was silly in me to care. Of course, 
standing on her grave couldn’t hurt Elbe, but some 
way I was in so nervous a state that I didn’t feel as 
though I could bear it. 

The house seems so big and lonely with only 
mother and myself in it. Of course there are others, 
to-night, for the relatives have not all gone, but we 
shall be alone soon — to-morrow, at least. And to- 
night we lock out of our home two of the four who 
have been so happy here. Mother cried the first 
night that we locked the door after EfBe was buried. 
Mother told father that we had locked Effie out, and 
then they both cried. But now it doesn’t seem like 
home any more, to have two gone. But I know Effie 
was glad to see papa. It seems to me that he must 
have thought that he was dreaming, at first when he 
saw her, after he had died that way, in sleep. And 
when he really knew that it was she, and that they 
were together in heaven, how glad he must have 
been ! 


Kitty’s Journal. 


103 


Mamma told me to take care of some things that 
the men took out of papa’s pockets and left on the 
bureau. I asked her if I might have his little old 
match-safe. And she said, “Yes.” 

Some way I care more for that match-safe than 
any thing else of his. Effie and I gave it to him 
once on his birthday, and he has carried it ever since. 
So often I have seen him standing before our wall 
match-safe by the stove, taking matches and putting 
them into his own little match-safe, shutting it, and 
slipping it into his pocket. I never thought that 
I should very distinctly remember so simple an act, 
but some way the old match-safe brought papa so 
distinctly before me that I ran away up-stairs and 
cried and cried over the battered little thing. 

TH UB SDAY, NOVEMBER 23. 

“ Thou art the helper of the fatherless.” 

Did I ever see that verse before in the Psalms ? 
Did David write those words especially for me ? 

I did not know they were in the Bible. I have 
drawn a line around that verse. I shall look at it 
every day. 

The three dollars came in payment for my story. 
The postman handed me the check to-day, but the 


104 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

one to whom I meant to show it is not here. To-day 
is Thursday. How little I thought last Monday that 
by to-night I should be fatherless, so far as this world 
is concerned. But God knew. That is the com- 
fort. I know through my own experience that Paul 
does not in vain call the Lord the “ God of consola- 
tion.” I suppose that some people would tliink me 
very easily comforted, and would not understand how 
much of sympathy and love there have always been 
between papa ^d myself. But I think, in the year 
and a half since Effie died, I have learned that our 
real home is not here, and I have come to look 
forward more and more to the “ house not made with 
hands.” 

Hot that I want to die, especially ; I don’t mean 
that. But I do mean that, in part, at least, the love 
that I had for my earthly home has been transferred 
to the heavenly. Heaven is real to me now. 

I cut my two stories out of those papers, and 
pasted them in a scrap-book and put them away. I 
don’t believe I can ever write any more, and I don’t 
want to keep those stories where I shall run across 
them and be always reminded of the way papa looked 
and talked that night when he read them. This 
house is just full of reminders of dead people. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


105 


The old ‘‘ Portuguese Hymn ” was sung at papa’s 
funeral. I shall never hear “ How iirm a founda- 
tion ” again, without thinking of him. How hymns 
do get mixed in with one’s life, if one lives long 
enough ! I think that hymn was very real to papa. 
I can almost hear him humming it now : 

“When through the deep waters I call thee to go 
The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow ; 

For I will be with thee thj’’ trials to bless, 

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress. 

“ E’en down to old age all my people shall prove 
My sovereign, eterual, unchangeable love ; 

And then, when gray hairs shall their temples adorn, 

Like lambs they shall still in my bosom be borne.” 

NOVEMBEB, 26. 

People come to see ns all the time. Mamma and I 
went down to papa’s old office to-day to look over Ins 
papers and to see what we wanted done with the fur- 
niture. It was dreadful going in there for the first 
time since his death, and seeing his inkstand with the 
pen on it, and his lamp lowered to the position in 
which he left it, and his books all where he placed 
them, and his chair half-turned around, and every 
thing looking as if he had just stepped out to see a 
patient and would be back in a few minutes. And 


106 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

we locked ourselves in ; and, of course, before we 
were nearly through looking over things somebody 
had to come and rap on the front door, and then, be- 
cause Ave didn’t answer, somebody poked through 
the next store and went around and rapped on pa’s 
back door. Mamma and I wouldn’t answer any raps 
for a while. We wanted to be let alone, and to find 
out from papa’s papers just how every thing stands. 
But the raps kept up every little Avhile, and by and 
by we answered. 

It Avas a grocer Avho has his store on the corner ; 
and he Avanted to tell us that at half-past seven that 
Monday night papa came into his store and bought 
some candles. The grocer said that papa seemed to 
be AA^ell at the time, he thought,'and yet it Avas only 
an hour from that time that a man Avent into papa’s 
office and found him lying on the lounge in the back 
room. The man thought papa AA^as asleep, so he 
called out, Doctor ! ” 

But papa never stirred. 

Then the man AA^alked through the door into 
the back room and up to the lounge, and said, ‘‘ Doc- 
tor!” 

But papa did not aAvake. 

The man touched his hand, listened for his breath, 


Kitty’s Journal. 


lOT 


ran out of tlie office into the grocery, and told the 
grocer that Dr. Hunter was lying dead on his lounge. 

“I couldn’t believe it at first,” said the grocer, 
wiping his face with his red handkerchief. “ I was 
that frightened I didn’t know what to do, and we all 
ran in here and looked at him. And a crowd 
came, and we sent for the coroner and a couple of 
doctors, but we couldn’t do nothin’.” 

And the grocer looked much relieved to think tliat 
his story was told. Mamma and I thanked liim for 
what he had done, and he went away, after offering to 
move the office furniture up to our house. So at last 
we could look at things in peace, and we gathered 
most of the papers and took them home, with some of 
papa’s books. 

It’s queer how, instead of thinking about papa, we 
must begin to look after business matters right away. 
I’ve made out a great many bills and sent them, and I 
suppose as long as people keep paying them we shall 
get along. But a good many people wont pay doc- 
tors’ bills. Papa left a little money, and of course 
we have this house. But I feel as if I ought to begin 
to see what I can do to earn my living. And I don’t 
know what that can be. Besides, mamma needs me 
at home. She has been feeling so sick since papa’s 


108 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

death that Pve been worried over her. She has taken 
such a cold that she can’t speak out loud, and I have 
been afraid she would have pneumonia. And I am 
sure that I should not know how to take care of her 
if she should have that. We have always had papa 
to tell us what to do if we were sick. 

A Portuguese man came to our house yesterday. 
Papa knew a great many Portuguese people. There 
are quite a number living in the mountains back 
of this place, and a good many more living around 
here. And papa always said that the Portuguese are 
generally honest people, very different from the Span- 
iards. 

Well, this Portuguese man came to pay three or 
four dollars that he owed papa, and just as he was go- 
ing he turned to mamma and said, “Doct’r very 
good to me, to my folks. You know what we all 
call him, we Portuguee ? ” 

Mamma shook her head. 

“Ko,” she said. 

The man grew animated in his gestures. He could 
not talk English very well. 

“ He very good,” he said. ‘‘ Make my boy well. 
Doct’r take no pay when I have no work. When I 
have work, he take leetle pay. He good to all poor 


Kim’s Journal. 


109 


— all poor. We Portuguee call him the father of 
the poor.” 

Mamma smiled, and the man repeated, the father 
of the poor.” 

Then he nodded and went away. 

I wonder if papa ever knew that the Portuguese 
called him that. I know he was very kind to poor 
people. He could not bear to see them suffer, and I 
know that many and many a time he gave food and 
medicine and comfort to poor souls who could never 
repay him in any way. I was riding with him a few 
weeks before he died, and he was talking over busi- 
ness affairs, and lie said to me, “ I have given away 
thousands of dollars’ worth of medicine and doctoring 
in this town.” 

And I know that is true. But I also know 
Who has rewarded him for his patient labors, and I 
do not think that papa is sorry that he tried to do all 
that he could for suffering poor people. 

I think he suffered very much over Effie’s death. 
The milliner who came to fix mamma’s bonnet for the 
funeral really cried when she told us about papa. 
She is an old friend of ours ; and she said that once in 
a while during the past year she had met him, and 
he always spoke of Effie. And once when he was in 


110 A. Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

her store he fairly cried about his “ little girl,” as he 
called her. 

And another woman told me that, a few months be- 
fore papa’s death, she looked out of her front door and 
saw him picking a rose from one of her bushes, and 
afterward he took a few leaves from a plant of 
“ dusty miller.” And she said she thought to herself 
as she looked at him, “ Poor man ! I guess he’s get- 
ting kind of natural-like. His girl used to like 
flowers.” 

And so, when papa died, the woman brought a 
great bunch of ‘‘dusty miller” to put with the 
flowers. 

“ It come from the same bush he picked the leaves 
from, miss,” said she, as she gave me the bunch. 

So before the people took the “dusty miller” 
to put with the flowers I picked ofl one of the gray, 
silvery leaves and hid it in my Bible. The leaf is 
beautifully perfect, now that it is dry. 

I had noticed, myself, that papa cared more for 
flowers than usual. Often, during the last three or 
four months of his life, I used to see him stop in the 
garden and pick rosebuds and other flowers before 
going down to his ofiice. He never used to do such 
a thing. He always liked flowers well enough, but 


Kitty’s Journal. 


Ill 


during those few months he seemed to have an almost 
childish fondness for them. I remember just how 
he looked one day, standing by the gate looking at a 
particularly beautiful rose, his white beard and gray 
hair showing a little as I saw him through the palings. 

I think he was too worn to endure such a sorrow 
as Effie’s death. A doctor’s life is a hard one any- 
way — up night and day, traveling mountains at mid- 
night in all kinds of weather, and never sure of an 
hour of rest. I do not think that papa was physic- 
ally able to bear such a shock as Effie’s death was 
to him. 

“ I arn a physician, and yet I could not cure my 
own child,” he would cry out. 

And he was not comforted even when we re- 
minded him that consumption is usually incurable. 

NOVEMBEB 30. 

I received a postal from Mr. Dayton, yesterday, 
expressing his sympathy for mamma and myself. 

“ I, too, am a mourner,” he wrote. 

Yes, I perceive he is. He has forgiven papa every 
thing, and he hopes that mamma and I will be weak 
enough to say that papa’s command not to visit this 
house is not binding, now that papa is dead. I guess 


11^ A Piece of Kitty Hcntee’s Life. 

Mr. Dayton will wait a long time for an answer to 
liis postal. 

I saw this in an autograph album once. It’s non- 
sense, but it’s true, as I guess Mr. Dayton thinks 
by this time. 

“ I sat me down in thought profound ; 

This maxim wise I drew: 

’Tis easier to like a girl 

Than to make a girl like you.” 


]D£jC£j]V[S£i!H> 6« 

It’s beautiful business, collecting bills. I’ve been 
at it all day. Mamma made the bills out this fore- 
noon while I scrubbed the sink and the zinc under the 
stove. Then I went forth to catch debtors. Went 
to Mrs. Pease. Front door fastened. Couldn’t get 
in. Went to back door. Not at home. Left the bill 
between the screen-door and the door. Hope sae 
will find it and pay the five dollars. 

Went to next house, to find Mrs. Lloyd. An old 
white-headed woman at door. Said Mrs. Lloyd had 
moved away ; stayed with another lady somewhere 
on Lincoln Street. 

Bade her good-bye and went for Mrs. Murphy. 
Yery affectionate. Wanted to know how my ma did. 
Said Mr. Murphy got paid only every two weeks. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


113 


Didn’t know whether this was his pay week or not. 
I volunteered to come around Saturday night and see. 
She said it would be too late. I inquired what time 
it would be. She said he didn’t get through work 
till six o’clock. I’d better come Monday. 

No, indeed. His pay would be gone by then. I’m 
going back Saturday. 

Went home and got four bills and mailed them. 
Went over to Levison. Went to drug-store, found a 
directory and found out where R. W. Moore, stair- 
builder, lives. Walked up Thirtieth Avenue and 
took a street-car. Horse-car man took me a block 
farther than he ought to. Found Moore’s. Awful 
to relate, the Moore family have moved to Michigan ! 
Got to send the bill after them. Don’t believe we’ll 
ever see a cent. 

Got on horse-car and came home. Went to see 
Mr. Lee. Fierce black dog, big fellow, came to the 
door to know what was the matter. Inquired for Mr. 
Lee. A woman said he was somewhere round tlie 
place. I caught sight of a man down in a corner of 
the lot. She said it was he. I went down there and 
found Lee and his two boys riding up in a manure cart. 
He hailed me with, “ O, it’s that^bill ! Well I’m real 

sorry I haven’t paid that. I ought to have gone 
8 


114 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

down and seen you about it. Well, you’ll get your 
money, sure. But you see I’ve had a lot of trouble 
last summer.” [H. B. He always has a lot of trouble. 
Chronic.] “ I had a big boat out on the lake and I 
lent it to a couple of fellows. May be you know 
them ; Snyder and Sykes. They took the boat up to 
Alden and smuggled watches. Kevenue officer 
caught them ; took the boat for taxes. Then I didn’t 
know what to do. Hired a lawyer. They told me it 
wouldn’t cost very much, and I didn’t want to lose the 
boat. Had to go up to Alden and hire another law- 
yer. Didn’t get through without spending seventy- 
five dollars. Had to borrow. Owe the man five dol- 
lars now. But I’ll pay you.” I left. 

Went after Mr. Cook. Found him leading out 
two horses. “O, it’s Miss Hunter. Well, I’ll pay, 
sure, the first of the month.” 

Went to Mrs. Bush. Out. Deborah in. Yery 
sorry. Money given out. Had change once to pay 
bill, but spent it for something else. Yery sorry. 

Went to Mrs. Schneider’s to find out about her 
daugliter. Mrs. Schneider was going down to see 
her the tenth of next month and would take the bill. 
It was eight dollars. Said her daughter tiiought the 
bill ought not to be more than three dollars, anyhow. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


115 


Mrs. Canfield owes us twenty-seven dollars, and 
we’ve written to her three times and received no 
answer. So I resolved to visit the lady. Tliought I 
could go on the stage. Went down to the post-office 
and found out that the stage doesn’t run nowadays. 
Went down to depot. Bought ticket to her station. 
Went on train. At the right station asked a 
woman about a ’ bus. Said it would be along in a 
minute. Man came with it. Got in. So did a 
woman and a man and a girl and their baggage. 
Kode for about two miles. Stopped at Mrs. Can- 
field’s. Paid twenty-five cents. Went in. Girl 
met me at the door. Asked if I could see Mrs. 
Canfield. Couldn’t. Had to tell girl my errand. 
She called up-stairs, and her mother answered 
that she would send the money to us by the gro- 
cery man. 

The girl offered to have her little sister take me 
down, in the buggy, to the horse-car. Befused. 
Don’t want to be under obligation to the Canfields 
for any thing. Afraid they might charge twenty- 
seven dollars for the ride. 

Walked down. Met the grocery man. He looked 
as if he didn’t know what ever took me away into 
the country so far. 


116 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

Walked on. Thought I’d go and find a horse-car 
at Third Street. Went on. Looked in vain for any 
body to give me a lift. Horse-car wasn’t on Third 
Street. Walked on. Walked liome. Distance five 
miles. Mother horrified. Ho money to give her. 
Perfectly exhausted. 

Why don’t people learn to pay their debts? I 
don’t like Emerson very well, but he gives one sen- 
sible rule, “Pay every debt as if God wrote the 
bill.” 

One thing is sure: mamma and I can’t pay our 
bills much longer if somebody doesn’t pay us. 

I was reading a book the other day, and it said, 
“ Debt is ruinous to all, and especially to widows.” 

I guess mamma and I are aware of that fact. Papa 
always paid all his bills, and mamma and I will pay 
ours, if we have to sell the house to do it. 

I never thought much about widows’ folks before. 
To wonder how they got along, I mean. But I am 
glad, in looking back, to see that papa used to think 
about helping such people. I remember one widow, 
a woman who used to wash for us, and I know that 
papa was always particular to pay her as soon as the 
day’s work was done, and if there had been an extra 
amount of washing he would offer her extra pay. 


Kitiy’s Journal. 


117 


And I remember a good many dollars that he paid 
her snch days. He wasn’t obliged to do so. She 
had a regular price for coming to wash, but his con- 
science would not allow him to always stick to that 
regular price, when he knew she had had a hard day. 
He always paid her extra. 

I wish papa’s debtors would be equally careful to 
pay us Avhat they owe. I’m sure I don’t want any 
thing more, but I would like to have them honest. 

1 found this scrap of poetry the other day. I don’t 
know who wrote it, but I guess it applies to wi lows’ 
folks as much as any body else. I do think women 
don’t know at all what to do about ayiy thing when 
they are left alone in the world. 


“ Being perplexed, I say, 

‘ Lord, make it right 1 
Niglit is as day to thee, 
Darkness as light. 

I am afraid to touch 
Things that involve so much. 
My trembling hand may shake. 
My skillful hand may break ; 
Thine can make no mistake.’ 

“Being in doubt, I say, 

‘Lord, make it plain ; 

Which is the true, safe way ? 
Which would be vain? 


118 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


I am not wise to know, 

Nor sure of foot to go ; 

My blind eyes cannot see 
What is so plain to thee; 

Lord, make it clear to me.’ ” 

JAirtTAIlY 5. 

Got that five dollars from Mrs. Bush at last. She 
said she dreamed about me. Thought I came for the 
money. 

I hope all the debtors will dream about me. 
Mean to haunt them till they do. 

Had to go to Mrs. Murphy’s five or six times, be- 
fore I got any money. Tlien it was only five dollars 
instead of twenty-five dollars. “An’ sure, an’ yer 
feyther said, he wouldn’t charge us more nor five 
dollars. We’re poor folks, we are.” 

A while ago I heard a minister preach a sermon on 
“ Godliness.” And in that sermon the minster said 
that he thought that one test of a man’s godliness 
was whether or not he paid his doctor bills, his 
churcli dues, and his religious newspaper subscrip- 
tions. There are kinds of bills that people Kam to 
pay, like taxes, for instance, and the minister said he 
did not think one could tell much about a man’s 
godliness by noticing whether he paid such bills, be- 
cause he was compelled to do so ; but the three kinds 


Kitty’s Journal. 


119 


of bills that were mentioned the minister considered 
to be fair test of a man’s character. 

I didn’t think very much at the time about what 
the minister said, but I’ve thought a good deal about 
it lately. 

PEBHUARY 27. 

I was going by the Catholic church to-day. A 
good many persons on my list of bills live on streets 
radiating from the one that church is on, and, conse- 
quently, I go by it almost every day. 

It was about eight o’clock and 1 knew most people 
would not want to see me yet, so I was walking 
rather slowly. A little boy who was sitting on a post 
beside the gate evidently thought that I was one of 
the congregation, for he eyed me compassionately and 
yelled out, If you don’t hurry up you wont get 
any of the ashes.” 

The little boy must have thought that his admo- 
nition had a remarkably good effect, for I ran up the 
steps to see what was going on. Inside the church 
were a good many people, and, surely enough, the last 
of the procession was passing before the altar, and 
the priest was throwing ashes at the people out of a 
censer, I guess, or some other such thing. 


120 A Piece of Kirry Hunter’s Life. 

Then I remembered that it was Ash Wednesday. 
Hot being particularly anxious to get any of the holy 
dust I did not rush up the aisle and tag along after 
the procession, but I contented myself by asking a 
Portuguese woman by my side, “ Where does the 
priest get the ashes ? ” 

She grinned, and seemed filled with astonished 
amusement, as if no one had ever asked her such a 
question before. 

“ I don’t know,” she said ; “ they are holy ashes.” 

And I went ofi, wondering from whose fire the, 
ashes were obtained. 

But O, what a dreadful day it has been 1 I am so 
tired that I do not believe I can go to prayer-meeting 
to-night. If I do go I know that all through the 
prayers and speeches I shall be thinking about the 
different houses I went to to-day, and how the peo- 
ple looked, and what they said, and what I am going 
to do to-morrow. 

I wish people would pay and not make me stop 
to talk. I’ve had to rehearse every particular of 
papa’s death to four separate families to-day. I 
couldn’t get away. They would ask questions. One 
woman paid her bill, though, so I didn’t so much mind 
having to tell her about things. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


121 


But the questions people ask 1 They usually begin, 
“ So your poor pa’s dead, aint he ? And how’s your 
poorina? Must have been an awful shock to her. 
How did she take it ? ” 

Then they go on : 

“I s’pose your father didn’t leave very much, 
did he ? Hope you and your ma will be able to live 
somehow. 

“ Oh, yes — that bill. Well — let’s see — I don’t be- 
lieve I can get the money before — ” etc. 

Others remark, “ Heard some one say that the men 
said that there wasn’t hardly any money in your pa’s 
pocket when he was found. S’pose you and your ma 
have lots left, though. Doctors always charge so 
high that they must make a mint of money. Don’t 
you think your ma ’d be willing that you should take 
off half this bill?” 

One, old woman actually wanted me to give her 
a receipt in full for twenty-five dollars when she 
had only paid me five dollars. I remonstrated, where- 
upon a volley of cruel remarks assailed my ears, and 
at last I took the five dollars, wrote a receipt for the 
same on the bill I brought, and handed it to the old 
woman. She couldn’t read, fortunately, and so she 
lives in the belief that she has a ‘‘ receipt in full.” 


122 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


Well, I might just as well have given her one. We 
never shall see any more of her money. 

I wish I were a boy. That is, I guess I wish so, a 
little. Because if I were, I could earn some money. 
I could “go West, young man,” and take up some 
government land, or get a position somewhere and 
earn enough to support mamma and myself. But 
I’m only a girl. Girls can’t do much, it seems to me. 

I picked up Lowell, the other day, and read this 
scrap that we used to recite at school : 

“No man is born into the world whose work 
Is not born with him ; there is always work, 

And tools to work withal, for those who will ; 

And blessed are the horny hands of toil ! 

The busy world shoves angrily aside 
The man who stands with arms akimbo set 
Until occasion tells him what to do : 

And he who waits to have his task marked out 
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.” 

“ Hum ! ” said I to myself, snapping the book to- 
gether, “ no man is born into the wmrld whose work is 
not born with him.” Is that the way you snub 
women, Mr. Lowell ? Don’t you suppose I want some- 
thing to do, if I am a girl ? ” 

Whereupon I wrathfully got my hat and started 
to catch Mike O’Flatherhy. who owes us “ tin dollars 
and sivinty-foive cints.” 


Kitty’s Journal. 


123 


And as I went I meditated upon the fact that my 
work seems to be composed of scraps, one here and 
another there. There doesn’t seem to be any whole 
work in the world for me. 

IIAY 3. 

Journal, you can’t guess what I’ve done ! 

I saw an advertisement in the paper to-day. It 
read, “Wanted, a young lady who is well acquainted 
with the Bible. Sabbath-school teacher preferred.” 

Well, I hope I know a little something about the 
Bible. Of course, I don’t know as much as I ought 
to, after all ma’s teaching, but I thought I probably 
knew enough for the advertisers. So I insisted on 
going to the city to the office named in the advertise- 
ment. And ma wouldn’t let me go alone, so she 
went too. 

A rosy-cheeked man was sitting at a table when we 
went into the office. His name is Mr. Gray, and he 
told us that the business is canvassing for a big pic- 
torial Bible meant for children. 

Mamma and I looked at each other. 

“ A book-agent ! ” I gasped. 

Mr. Gray looked at me and corrected me in a dig- 
nified manner. 


124 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

“A canvasser,” he said, “We never call those 
whom we employ ‘ book-agents.’ ” 

“ What is the difference ? ” was on my tongue’s 
end, but Mr. Gray was so dignified that I dared not 
ask. 

“ Let’s go,” motioned mamma to me. 

I shook my head. 

Mr. Gray looked up from his writing and caught 
the meaning of our signs. 

“A good many people come here and rush out 
again, just as soon as they find what it is we want,” 
said he. “ They wont stop to hear a thing about it.” 

There was a pause. 

“ My partner is in the next room,” said Mr. Gray 
again, lifting his head fromhis work. “ He is talking 
to a gentleman. If you will wait a minute he will 
explain things to you.” 

So we wailed. 

Pretty soon the “ gentleman ” came out, and Mr. 
Shepard, the partner, appeared. He was a tall man 
with a girlish face, blue eyes, and a slight lisp. 

He ushered us into the other room, and we talked 
and talked, and finally he persuaded me to try. He 
gave me a couple of pages of printed matter, and said 
it was my “ lesson.” And he showed me in the 


Kitty’s Journal. 


125 


Bible tlie pictures to which the ‘‘lesson” referred. 
He told me to go home and learn my “ lesson,” and 
come back and recite it when I thought I knew it 
perfectly. 

MAY 4. 

I know it. I’ve said it over and over to myself. 
I know it perfectly, all but a story about a little boy 
that died. It’s a story to be told in connection with 
the picture of Elijah’s ascent to heaven, but I can’t 
tell the story without crying, so I’m going to leave it 
out. I’ve tried to say the thing to myself two or 
three times, but I always cried before getting through, 
and I’m not going around from house to house cry- 
ing. Why, I’d be known as the “ weeping book- 
agent ! ” I guess I’ll have enough to say, anyway, 
without that. 

MAY 6. 

Such a time as I’ve had ! Well, to begin at the 
beginning, I started this morning to see my employ- 
ers, and “ recite my lesson.” I rather dreaded it, but 
still I wanted to have it over. 

Mr. Shepard was at leisure after I had waited in 
the other room about half an hour. He had a Bible 


126 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

all ready for me to recite with. Tliat is, he had 
pasted little slips of paper standing out at the various 
pictures that I was to speak about, so that I could 
turn the leaves easily. 

Well, he called in Mr. Gray to hear the perform- 
ance, and I sat down in front of Mr. Shepard and 
addressed my remarks to him. We ‘‘ played,” you 
know. Journal, that he was the man to whom I was 
trying to sell a book. 

I told about each picture and explained it in my most 
charming style, and Mr. Shepard pretended to be 
very much interested, and said Yes,” and ‘‘ Indeed ! ” 
and “Yery pretty,” and was altogether the most 
amiable person imaginable. 

It was really quite funny before we were through. 
I had no idea, before, that book-agents go through 
with such farces beforehand. I thought the agents 
just made up something to say on the spur of the 
moment, when people came to the door. 

Well, I told Mr. Shepard about the binding of 
the Bible, and about its price, and the number of pages 
in the book, and the number of pictures, and then I 
stopped, for I had “ said my lesson.” 

Mr. Shepard smiled and turned to Mr. Gray. 

“ That’s very nice,” he said in a pleased way. 


Kitty’s Jouenax. 


127 


And Mr. Gray nodded. 

“ I could listen to you all day,” said Mr. Shepard, 
enthusiastically, turning to me. ‘‘But I noticed you 
left out that story about the little boy, in connection 
with the prophet Elijah’s chariot. That is a very 
effective story, when it is well told.” 

“Yes,” I said. “It’s too much so.” 

Mr. Shepard did not understand. I had not 
spoken very loudly. 

“ What is it ? ” he said, bending forward. 

I felt myself turning very red, and I hardly knew 
what to say. I didn’t want him to think that I am a 
cry-baby. 

“ I couldn’t say it,” I answered. “I’ve lost too many 
myself to be able to tell a story like that — ” 

And my voice trembled so I thought I was surely 
going to cry right there and then. But I didn’t. 

“Is that so?” said Mr. Shepard, in his most 
tender manner. “Did it affect you as much as 
that?” 

He sat looking at me as if I were an extraordinary 
specimen of a tender-hearted female. But I was too 
much engaged in controlling myself to resent in words 
the sympathetic sound in his voice, which I was sure 
was only “ put on.” 


128 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

Presently Mr. Shepard hunted up a paper and 
presented it to me. 

“ Pev. Mr. Smith wrote that recommendation of 
this Bible for us,” said he, cheerfully, “and I am 
going to send you to him. I have no doubt he will 
give you the names of those members of his church 
who have children. It is quite a large church ; some 
four hundred members, I believe.” 

Four hundred members ! I made a rapid mental 
calculation. 

“ Kow,” said I to myself, “ half of those will have 
children. That’s two hundred. May be half of them 
will take the Bible. I’m sure I should think they 
might. That’s one hundred. And I make two 
dollars and thirty cents on each Bible. Let’s see. 
That’s two hundred thirty dollars. Why, I’ll get 
rich ! I’ll go and see them all in one month ! ” 

Just then Mr. Gray’s father came in. He is an 
old man, and he had a young lady with him. She 
wanted to be a book agent too. 

“ Had you just as lief go through with your lesson 
again ? ” asked Mr. Shepard of me. “ I’d like to 
have this young lady hear how you do it. You say 
it so very nicely.” 

So I went through with the whole thing again. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


129 


I looked at the young lady at every picture, and she 
smiled and nodded at my remarks. And I looked 
at Mr. Gray’s father, and he smiled and nodded at 
my remarks. And I looked at Mr. Shepard, and Jie 
smiled and nodded at my remarks. 

O, the three were very, very kind, and when I 
finished, they all burst out in such praise that I felt 
ready to go out and sell Bibles to every body on the 
streets. 

My jubilant spirits received a slight shock, how- 
ever, before I left the ofiice. I was sitting, waiting in 
the other room, where the typewriter girl was at work, 
when a man spoke to me. He was rather old, with 
a white beard, and a solemn expression. He had 
been sitting waiting while I spoke to the typewriter 
girl, and suddenly he addressed me. 

“ Are you going to be a book-agent ? ” asked he. 

“ Yes,” said I, nodding gayly. 

You’ll soon get tired of it,” said the man, shak- 
ing his head sadly. 

A prophetic chill went through me. Could it be 
that he was an old book-agent ? Did he know what 
he was talking about ? 

But Mr. Shepard appeared just then with my 

introduction, and 1 remembered that he had said 
9 


130 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

he could listen to me all day. The forebodings 
vanished. I was sure that all would be well. The 
prospects of becoming a book-agent were glorious. 

So I started off, elated, to find the Kev. Mr. Smith. 
I went to the church, and, after waiting at the side 
door for a while, I found the gardener watering the 
grass, and he informed me that I could find the min- 
ister in his study at half-past ten. 

So I walked around, and stood in the wind for 
an hour. I knew perfectly well that I was catching 
cold. The wind blew tremendously, and great clouds 
of dust rose and swept down upon the defenseless 
eyes and ears and nose of this book-agent. 

Half-past ten came at last, but I could not get 
in at the door. Then I stood in the wind, and 
walked to the corner and back again for another 
hour. 

I didn’t dare go far away, for fear that minister 
should come, and I should not see him. 

What should I do? I was almost shivering. I 
said to myself, ‘‘ You’ll have pneumonia or something 
else to-night, you aspiring book- agent.” 

But even this cheerful prophecy did not relieve my 
mind. I couldn’t go back to the office, and tell my 
employers that I had not accomplished the very first 


Kitty’s Journal. 131 

tiling they had asked me to do. I must see that 
minister somehow. 

The prospect of becoming a book-agent was be- 
coming slightly less glorious. 

In the midst of my despair the door opened, and 
when I hastened to greet the minister, behold, it was 
that gardener instead. 

“ Can I see the minister now ? ” I asked, shielding 
my face from an extra shower of dust. 

‘‘ Guess he’s up-stairs,” nodded the man. 

So, grasping my precious outfit tighter, I went up, 
knocked, heard ‘‘ Come in,” and in I went and took 
a seat with great inward fear and trembling, although 
I trust I did not show that in my face. 

Mr. Smith was evidently writing a sermon, and I 
quaked for fear that I had spoiled an idea. 

Weil, I stumbled through what I had to say, tell- 
ing him that, as he had written a recommendation of 
the book, I hoped that he would give me a list of 
the members of his church who have children, and 
who might possibly take the book. 

Mr. Smith glowered at me. I began to realize 
how fine a thing it is to be a book- agent. 

‘‘ How did your employers obtain my written rec- 
ommendation of the book ? ” he asked, sternly. 


132 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

I was tliunderstrack. What a horrible question ! 

“ I do not know, I am sure,” I said, in consterna- 
tion. “I suppose, of course, that you gave it to 
them.” 

Mr. Smith looked at me a minute to see if I really 
told the truth. I saw that he thought at last that I 
did. 

Then he spoke, still in a very dignified manner. 

‘M wrote that recommendation for a very poor 
member of mj^ church,” said he. “ In fact, she is so 
poor that the church supports her from the poor- 
fund. She is in ill-health, but she thought that per- 
haps she could sell some of the illustrated Bibles if 
I would write a recommendation that she could show 
to the church members, and I did so, hoping to .aid 
her. But how that recommendation fell into any 
other person’s hands I do not see. I shall have 
nothing more to do with the book.” 

Well, of course, this book-agent felt horribly. I 
don’t know what Mr. Smith would have said if he 
had known that I had a copy of his recommendation, 
in typewriting, hidden in my book. 

But I rose and apologized most humbly. I told 
him I was very sorry to have troubled him. I had 
not had the slightest idea that the recommendation had 


Kitty’s Journal. 


133 


been obtained in any under-hand waj^ or I should 
not have come to him. I was very sorry. 

Mr. Smith bowed and tried very hard to smile. 
But he did not succeed. 

And I departed, wondering if I had spoiled that 
sermon. 

The prospect of being a book-agent was enveloped 
in Stygian gloom. I met one of my employers on 
the stairs leading to the office, and told him my 
woeful tale. 

He laughed a little, told me that the woman for 
whom Mr. Smith wrote that recommendation was 
a sick person whom he (Mr. Shepard) knew could not 
be an agent, but, to please her, he had allowed her 
to take a Bible and try. She came back in a few 
days and gave up her outfit and said she could not 
do the work. Slie handed him the recommendation 
that Mr. Smith wrote for her. 

My employer says he will send me to another 
church. Told me to go home and rest, and ask my 
friends to buy a Bible. 

I went home. 

Ma had made an orange-pudding. It was good. 
I ate it and related my experiences. Then I sat by 
the fire and roasted myself in the vain endeavor to 


134 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

sweat off this dreadful cold I have caught. My 

throat is sore and my lungs feel all stuffed up. I 

believe I have a cold that will last for weeks. I was 
✓ 

an idiot to stand in that wind so long. 

I’m afraid that being a book-agent is not going to 
be such fun as I thought. 

MAT 8. 

I was sent to another minister, a Mr. Wood. I 
found the poor man in, and I made known my 
errand. 

He was evidently a mild, sweet-tempered person, 
with gray hair and a good-looking face. I mean a 
face that looked as if he was good. 

After looking over the Bible he pulled out his 
note-book and gave me a list of names of those of 
his church members who have children, aud wlio, 
he thought, might take the book. The minister 
seemed very tired, and I should think that he is in 
poor health. 

He said, wearily, as he put his note-book back into 
his pocket, “ I have been attending to other folks’ 
business all day.” 

Now, if I had been in my normal state of mind, 
1 should have really sympathized with the poor soul, 


Kitty’s Journal. 


135 


for I know it must be hard to be called constantly 
to do this and that for other people, and to have no 
leisure for one’s own. 

But being a book-agent for even these few days 
has had the effect of making me feel that every 
man’s hand is against me and mine against every 
man, so I only answered, “That is partly what 
ministers are for, I suppose. Isn’t it ? ” 

Poor man ! He tried to smile. 

“ It seems so,” he said, in a resigned way, and off 
I went with my list. 

I did remember to thank him for it, though, and 
I was glad to see, through an open door, that his 
daughter had almost got supper ready. I think he 
needed it. 

But I am afraid that I shall not sell many Bibles in 
his church. He told me that his church is small and 
most of the people are not very well off. Besides, 
there is a church debt that they are trying to pay. 

MAY 14. 

My arm ached so from carrying those books that I 
thought I must rest somewhere, and I was near St. 
Patrick’s Church, so I slipped in there. May be it 
was a funny place to go to rest, but I was glad to get 


136 A Piece of Kitty Huntek’s Life. 

away from the street and sit down and collect my 
scattered senses. 

There were not many people in the church. 
Away up in front, on the right-hand side, on the 
wall, was a great painting of St. Joseph dying. I 
shouldift have known that it was Joseph at all, but 
once I heard the Irish washer-woman, who used to 
wash for us in the days when we could afford to 
have washing done, tell about that painting in St. 
Patrick’s Church. She spoke of it with a great deal 
of pride ; so when I saw the picture I recognized it 
as her “mighty foine paintin’ of blissed St. Joseph 
a’dyin’.” There were two or three people around 
the dying man in tlie picture. I suppose Christ 
and Mary were two of them. 

While I sat there looking over my list, marking off 
those persons that I had been to see, and gazing at 
the names and residences of the unfortunate indi- 
viduals doomed yet to receive a visit from me, the 
Catholic school next door was let out, and the children 
came in, two or three at a time, to say their prayers. 
The youngsters made funny little bobs to the altar, 
and I am afraid were trying to “ show off ” their 
religion before the stranger lady. Little did the chil- 
dren think that she was only a miserable book-agent. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


137 


The young ones looked out of the corners of their 
eyes at me, and, if they caught me looking at them, 
they redoubled their zeal. Poor little souls ! One 
could see that it was almost all mere ceremony. The 
boys went through their exercises in a hurry and 
were gone, but some of the little girls evidently were 
“ too religious,” in the sense in which Paul applied 
those words to the Athenians. 

Pretty soon a big, fat Irish woman came in, puffing 
and panting. She strode heavily up the aisle, gazed 
around her, and looked at me. Then she spoke : 

“ Do ye know if the howly father’s a-sittin’ ? ” 

I did not quite comprehend just the first sec- 
ond. Then, as I looked at her perspiring red face, 
I took in her meaning, and answered, “I don’t 
know.” 

But I did, pretty soon, for the “ howly father ” 
came in and went into one of the closets — confes- 
sionals, I suppose they call them — and the red-faced 
Mrs. Moriarty had a chance to “ confiss,” for the 
“ howly fatlier ” was indeed “ a-sittin’.’’ 

She came out afterward, and said a string of 
prayers, judging from the way she went around the 
church. Before she was through I gathered up my 
books and started again. But I got no orders, and 


138 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

came home discouraged. Of all dreadful businesses, 
being a book-agent is the worst. 

MAY 18. 

Being a book-agent is horrid ! There, now ! 
That’s the truth. IVe walked miles and miles, 
I know, and been rained on, and mj arm is so 
strained with carrying that book that I wake up nights 
with the ache. Besides, I don’t sell much, and I am 
beginning to hate the sight of that Bible. It seems 
wicked to say so, but I don’t mean it that way. It 
is only this special copy that I hate. I feel like an 
outcast on the face of the earth — like Cain, or the 
Wandering Jew. 

I have had doors almost shut in my face ; people 
will not wait for me to ‘‘say my piece” through. 
That is, most of them wont. One woman did, the 
other day. I went rattling on and on, wondering 
why she didn’t stop me, and when I got to the end 
of my speech and my breath, she laughed in my 
face, and said, “ Pretty good lesson for you to have 
to learn, wasn’t it ! ” 

And then we both laughed. I rather think she 
had been a book-agent herself some time, or else 
how did she know that agents have to “ learn their 


Kitty’s Journal. 


139 


lessons ” before they go out canvassing ? The 
laughter did me a little good. But she didn’t buy 
any Bible. 

Children meet me at the doors to state that “ ma 
doesn’t want any thing.” I walked all day in the 
wind, Monday, seeing the people on my list. I 
always asked them if their names were so and so, and 
if they went to Dr. Wood’s church, and I suspect I 
was treated better on that account. But, if I were 
in a minister’s place, and wanted to look out for my 
own good, I would not give any agent the names of 
my church members. It’s enough to make the mem" 
bers disgusted to have book-agents coming to see them. 

Well, my employers gave me a roll of “reports.” 
On them I have to write how many hours I work 
each day, whom I visit, and what the excuses are for 
not taking the book, 

I made out one report. Mr. Shepard looked at it, 
and said, “Kow, I wouldn’t take such excuses as 
these.” 

He was looking severely at my “ excuse ” column, 
where I had written opposite the names such excuses 
as these, “ Ko money,” “ Children too small,” “ Have 
a book just like it,” “ Cannot afford it,” “ Don’t 
want it.” 


140 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

Tliej were tlie best excuses that I could make for 
the people. They were the things that I had had 
said to me, at least. 

Put Mr. Shepard gave me a long lecture on mak- 
ing people take things whether people want to do so 
or not. 

Then he gave me a letter of introduction to a rich 
woman up on the hill. The letter was signed by 
Mr. Gray’s wife ; I don't believe she knew any thing 
about it, though. The letter w'as written on the 
typewriter, and I think that it was signed with Mrs. 
Gray’s name just for effect, because she is a rich 
man’s daughter and has some influence in a certain 
“ set.” 

I know very well that the rich woman I was sent 
to did not want to buy the book at all. I had to go 
to her house three times in one day. She didn’t see 
me once. I guess she was too disgusted. 

The stylish-looking French maid carried my Bible 
up-stairs, and, like the unwise book-agent that I am, 
I allowed her to take up the sample of the cheaper 
cover, a thing that Mr. Shepard scolded me for, 
afterward. 

Well, the French maid, who wore a white cap, 
came back and looked at me in such a way that I 


Kitty’s Journal. 


141 


knew her mistress had said that she wished all 
book-agents were dead. But the maid said that the 
lady would take the cheaper copy. The maid also 
added with a smile that I might bring the book or 
not, just as I pleased. I needn’t come again, unless 
I wanted to. 

But I did. I wasn’t going to give the lady a 
chance to say the next time she met Mrs. Gray, 
“ Why, I told the young lady you sent that I would 
take a Bible. I thought it was so strange she didn’t 
come back witli it. I wanted one so much ! ” 

I have an idea that that is just the way that 
woman would talk, although I never saw her. So I 
went down to the office, and got the book, and tramped 
back, and was paid five dollars and a half, and saw 
the Bible carried off through the great hall. I don’t 
believe that book will ever be opened in that house. 
The woman took the Bible just for policy’s sake. 

That makes two books that I have sold, and I have 
not made enough by fifty cents to pay for my outfit. 
Poor ma ! I told her that next time I wanted to be 
a book-agent I would take fifty cents and throw it 
away, and then I should have made exactly as much 
as I have now after two weeks of the most dreadful 
work that I ever did in my life. I have another 


142 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Lite. 

order, tliough, for the end of the month, and if that 
woman keeps her promise, I shall come out two 
dollars and a half ahead — ^two dollars and a half a 
month ! Isn’t that fine pay ? 

Mr. Shepard doesn’t believe in that third order at 
all. He says if the woman had waTited the Bible 
she would have taken it right away. But I know 
better. She will buy it at the end of the month. 
She wants the book for her little girl’s birthday. 

My business humiliates me. I hate it. Ma wants 
me to give it up, but I tell her that I am going to 
stick to it till I get enough back to pay for what we 
spent for my outfit, anyway. 

I went to see one woman to-day, and she pitied 
me for having to trudge up and down so many stairs. 
But 1 told her that I didn’t mind that, if only folks 
would be kind to me after I had climbed the stairs. 
She said she didn’t see why people couldn’t be kind 
and polite, she was sure. 

But I see. I know I used to hate to have book- 
agents come to the house, and I hardly ever let them 
have a chance to say the whole of their speeches 
about the books. I was annoyed to have to leave 
my work and spend time listening to such stuff, when 
I was sure I could not afford to get any book. And 


Kitty’s Journal. 


143 


I detest book-agents now just as much as I did then. 
I bate in j work. I don’t see what I am doing it 
for. I feel asliamed to see any body, even the other 
church members. I tliink I’ll stay home to-night. 
I know one thing : and that is that if ever a book- 
agent comes to our house again I will treat him 
beautifully, and listen to all he has to say even if 
I can’t buy a thing. 

MAY 30. 

There, now ! That woman did keep her promise. 
I carried her that Bible to-day, and she paid me like 
a lady. Then I went straight back to the office, and 
I saw red-cheeked Mr. Gray, and said I to him, “I’m 
not going to work for you any more.” 

And dear Mr. Gray looked at me reproachfully, 
and said he, “ O, I hoped that you would have quite a 
.number of orders for us by this time! I am afraid 
your heart is not in the work.” 

And then I told him I guessed it wasn’t exactly. 
And then I handed him my roll of “ reports ” and 
skipped down-stairs, a free woman once more. I 
feel as if I’d spent the month in jail. Kever, never, 
never^ as long as I live and breathe and have my be- 
ing, will I be a book-agent again ! 


144 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


PART II. 

J (JJLjT 3, 18— 

I HAYE been reading over this journal this after- 
noon. It is two years since I wrote in it, and my last 
entry is of that month in which I was a book-agent. 
O, if I could only walk enough to be one now, how 
happy I should be ! I never half appreciated my 
feet in those days. I never was half thankful 
enough, either, for the power of walking. 

For a year I have not left this room, and per- 
haps — perhaps I never shall leave it again. It is 
that last thought that drives me nearly wild some- 
times. I did not care so much for a time, because 
I felt too sick to do any thing, but these last few 
months, when I have been better, and yet incapable 
of doing any thing, I have so dreaded living on and 
on, a burden to others. To know that I must sit 
here and do nothing from morning till night, day 
after day ! I cannot walk at all. 

Poor mamma ! When I found out that I could not 
earn enough to support us, she turned to that last 
refuge for penniless Americans — she tried keeping 


Kitty’s Journal. 


145 


boarders. And she tries it still, poor woman ! I 
could help her at first ; but after I became sick she 
had to hire help, and that takes off profits so — be- 
sides the bother of training servant-girls to do the 
work properly. 

I have grown to feel about as old as most folks do 
at eighty, I suppose. And O, how bitterly unrec- 
onciled I am to my life ! I always hated being de- 
pendent on other people. Always ! And now to be 
dependent forever! To see mamma trouble over 
the butcher and grocery bills, to have her wearing 
herself out and becoming gray over those hateful 
boarders, and over waiting on me, and to know that 
I can never do a thing — O, it is too hard, too bitter, 
too unjust ! I don’t feel as if the Lord treated me 
fairly, setting me aside this way from all the work I 
long to be doing. 

O, I didn’t mean to write that last sentence 1 But it’s 
down. And O, that thought comes to me so often ! 
It isn’t a thought a Christian ought to have, I know, 
but it will come. 

Fat Grandma Grigsby comes in to see me some- 
times, and regales me with extracts from sermons she 
has heard or read. The extracts are generally about 

death and the grave, and when she goes off she 
10 


146 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

always pats me exasperatingly on the head and says, 
“ Be reconciled, child, be reconciled. There are lots 
of harder things than sitting in a chair the way 
you do.” 

And she leaves me in so annoyed a state that I 
hardly know how to treat her decently. But I mast ; 
for she’s the front-room boarder, and if I should say 
any thing saucy to her I am afraid that she would 
leave, and that would make things harder than ever 
for mamma. 

O, tiiose horrid, horrid boarders ! How I do detest 
every one of them ! I don’t know a more unprin- 
cipled set of people than those often become who 
board, and room, and rent all the time. We’ve had 
a good deal of variety in our boarders. There was 
that white-haired, queer old lady who came to see 
us. Slie was the first boarder we had. She sat down 
and talked mamma into taking her. The old lady 
said she wouldn’t be “any trouble at all.” She 
didn’t care much what kind of a room she had, and 
all she wanted was just plain, wholesome victuals. 
Bat what she wanted most of all was, as she phrased 
it, “ exchange of thought and sentiment.” 

Well, mamma took her, and we did have “ thought 
and sentiment ” in plenty, surely enough. Whether we 


Kitty’s Journal. 


147 


ever exchanged any or not, I don’t know, but I am 
sure we never took any of hers to keep. For that 
woman turned out to be a most ardent spiritualist, 
and poor mamma, after enduring all sorts of talk about 
“ spirits ” and ‘‘ rappings ” and ‘‘ mediums,” and be- 
ing presented with one of the old lady’s photographs 
taken with “ spirit-faces ” all around her, was at last 
obliged to send the old lady off. She went, angry 
enough, and she informed us that the next time she 
received revelations from Effie she would not report 
them to us ; no, not even if Effie sent us a message. 
Ma and I fairly shouted for joy when we saw that 
woman’s last trunk drive off, and ma murmured, ‘‘ O, 
I am so thankful ! It seemed to me that I coiildnH 
hear that woman tell another time what messages 
poor Effie sent to us. If the child were able to send 
us a message I know she wouldn’t send it by any 
such woman.” 

And we both solemnly resolved that, if we starved, 
no spiritualist should ever enter this house again. 

We’ve had ‘‘city-folks” among our boarders. 
Some of them are here now. One of them is a 
woman who insists on using a gasoline-stove in her 
room. And O, the hundreds of times that the abom- 
inable smell of gasoline has penetrated into this 


148 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

room and made the atmosphere almost unbearable ! 
Sometimes, when I couldn’t get to the , window to 
open it, the odor would make me sick and dizzy 
before mamma could spare time to run up from the 
kitchen and air this room. O, I detest the smell of 
gasoline-stoves 1 

And I dislike the gasoline-stove woman’s little 
girl, too. She is pretty ; at least, I thought so when 
I first saw her, but I’m tired of her looks now. She 
is about seven years old, and it is trying enough to 
endure her. I sit- by the open window most days 
now, because the weather is so warm, and that child 
comes to the window and skips rope twenty times a 
day, I do believe. She wants to show off,” and she 
does annoy me so much ! If I want to read, she 
wants to talk, and I wish I could tell her to hush,” 
but I don’t dare. I’m afraid the gasoline-stove and 
the gasoline-stove woman’s little girl would depart 
together. That child with a boy climbed up to the 
tin roof over my head and executed a war-dance, the 
other day. That was a lively experience for me. 

And the children of the boarders break down the 
flowers, and swing on the gate, and kick pieces out 
of the walk, and pull plants up by the roots, and take 
out lead-pencils and write their names on every thing. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


149 


so that, if they’re not here next year, we shall re- 
member them ! 

What a cheerful journal I am making of this ! 
What a sweet-tempered invalid folks would judge 
me to have been, if this journal should be found 
some time after I am dead. It wont be. I’m going 
to burn it up when it is full. I believe I will write 
in it more now, though. I can put all my grumbles 
in here, and then I sha’ii’t have to say them to mamma. 
She has enough to trouble her, without my saying 
any thing. I feel better already for having set down 
my woes. Perhaps I sha’ii’t have so many every day. 
These are the accumulated sorrows of a couple of 
years, you must remember, beloved Journal. That 
is the reason why the woes occupy so many pages of 
you. I suppose you wish that I hadn’t remembered 
your existence, but unfortunately you can’t help 
that. 

This was my verse for to-day. Grandma Grigsby 
has presented me with one of those wall text charts 
the leaves of which you turn over, and when mamma 
turned the leaf for me this morning, the text for the 
day showed, and it was this: “For since the begin- 
ning of the world men have not heard, nor perceiv^ed 
by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, besides 


150 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth 
for him.” 

‘‘ For him that waiteth for him ! ” Isn’t that 
what I have been doing ? Or is it ? I have sat and 
looked at that text all day. In all these months that 
I have suffered, have I not prayed and waited, often 
with a great deal of impatience, for that health and 
ability to work that seem to be denied me ? What 
if, at the end of the waiting, there should be some 
better thing than health waiting for me ! I do not 
know what such a thing could be, but I do know 
that that text has been a kind of comfort to me to- 
day. One wouldn’t think so, to read all that I have 
written, yet it is true. I wonder how many, when 
Isaiah wrote that text, were waiting for Him, 
and I wonder what it was that God “ prepared ” for 
them. 

O, what a lot of things I had planned to do in this 
world, and now I can’t do any of them ! Why, I was 
going to teach, and study, and know ever so much, 
and when I was a child I used to think that may be 
I would go to some far-away land and be a mission- 
ary some day. I never thought of having to sit still 
in a chair. I remember cutting out a piece of poetry 
called ‘‘ The Missionary’s Call,” and putting it away 


Kitty’s Journal. 


151 


where I knew where it was. I have forgotten most 
of it, but it began this way — 

“ My soul is not at rest. There comes a strange 
And secret whisper to my spirit, like 
A dream of night, that tells me I am on 
Enchanted ground. Why live I here ? The vows 
Of God are on me, and I may not stop 
To play with shadows, or pluck earthly flowers, 

Till I my work have done, and rendered up 
Account. The voice of.my departed Lord, 

‘ Go teach all nations,’ from the Eastern world 
Comes on the night air, and awakes my ear. 

‘ And I will go.’ ” 

And then, toward the end of the piece, it said, 

“And when I come to stretch me for the last. 

In unattended agony, beneath 
The cocoa’s shade, or lift my dying eyes 
From Afric’s burning sand, it will be sweet 
That 1 have toiled for other worlds than this. 

I know I shall feel happier than to die 
On softer bed.” 

Well, mav be I wouldn’t have made much of a 

■ «/ 

missionary. I don’t know about that, I’m sure. 
But it seems rather queer that the people who want 
to do such tilings are the very persons who can’t, and 
that the people who don’t want to do them are the 
ones who seem to be led to do them at last. O, I’m 
of no use in the world at all ! 


152 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

JULY 20. 

Grandma Grigsby brought me a copy of Baxter’s 
Sainfs Rest. 

I didn’t want to read it, very much. But I knew 
I’d have to read a little, any way. Grandma Grigsby 
would think me a dreadful sinner if I didn’t. 

I turned over the leaves a while, and I was just go- 
ing to shut the book when I caught sight of this — 

“ Ohjection 3. ‘ O,’ says another, ‘ if my affliction 
did not disable me for duty, I could bear it; but 
it makes me useless and utterly unprofitable.’ 

Answer. 1. For that duty which tends to thy 
own personal benefit it does not disable thee, but it 
is the greatest quickening help thou couldst expect. 
Thou usest to complain of coldness, and dullness, and 
worldliness, and security. If affliction will not help 
thee against all these, by warning, quickening, rous- 
ing thy spirit, I know not what will. 

“2. As for duty to others, and service to the 
Church, it is not thy duty when God disables thee. 
He may call thee out of the vineyard in this respect, 
even before he call thee away by death ! If he lay 
thee in the grave, and put others in thy place to do 
the service, is this any wrong to thee ? or does it be- 
come thee to repine at it? Must God do all the 


Kitty’s Journal. 


153 


work by thee ? Has he not many others as dear to 
him, and as fit for the employment ? ” 

How, Mr. Baxter, I do object ! You talk just 
like Grandma Grisby. May be if I were so pompous 
a looking man as your picture in the front of this 
book represents, and if I wore a black gown with 
full sleeves, and a square white bib under my august 
chin, and if my hair hung down under a black sort 
of cap with a white border like a nun’s bonnet — may 
he then I might be willing to hide myself away in a 
room and never do any thing. But I’d just like to 
know, Mr. Baxter, if you ever had to do such a 
thing, and if you were so beautifully resigned as you 
advise other people to be under such circumstances. 
Of course, I don’t expect God to “ do all the work 
by” me. I never expected that when I was well. 
But I could do a little, and that little made me 
happy. And now I can’t do any thing. 

LATER. 

Mr. Baxter, I beg your pardon. I’ve looked you 
up in the cyclopedia, and you did know what you 
were talking about ; at least you knew afterward. 

Mamma came in after I had written that apostrophe 
to the learned divine, and I asked her to wheel me over 


154 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

to the book-case. Slie did so, and I found out from 
the cyclopedia that Baxter published the Sainfs 
Everlasting Rest in 1650, and that about thirty- 
five years afterward Judge Jefifries fined him for a 
supposed seditious passage in his writings, and, not 
being able to pay the fine, Baxter was imprisoned 
for nearly eighteen months. 

So he did know what it was to be shut up. I 
wonder if when he was in prison he ever remem- 
bered what he had written : “ Must God do all his 
work by thee ? Has he not many others as dear to 
him, and as fit for the employment ? ” 

Perhaps that was the reason why the Lord let Mr. 
Baxter be put in prison — to let him see if he had 
as much patience and confidence as he thought he 
had. 

I believe it was Mr. Beecher who said, “ It takes 
longer for man to find out man than any other 
creature that is made.” 

Well, Pv^e given up trying to find out other peo- 
ple. I think tliat if I find out what is in myself I’ll 
do pretty well. It’s real hard work to become 
acquainted with one’s own self. You just get so 
you think you can depend on yourself to * walk 
straight, and all of a sudden something happens. 


Kitpy’s Journal. 


155 


and down you go, and you’re just as much sur- 
prised as any one else is. 

J UXjIT 28. 

The odor from that gasoline-stove is in here again 
to-day. I wish that woman had a little more love 
for her neighbors. 

I read a verse in Leviticus to-day. It was this : 
‘‘ Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against 
the children of thy people, but thou slialt love thy 
neighbor as thyself.” 

Now I believe that that woman and I both break 
that command. She doesn’t love me as herself if 
she is willing to annoy me this way. And as long 
as she does annoy me I am afraid that 1 shall “bear 
her a grudge.” 

I do suppose that when that command was given 
to the children of Israel they needed it pretty badly. 
For they were traveling, camping through the wil- 
derness, and it is so easy to become impatient and im- 
polite when one is traveling, I think. At least I 
used to find it much harder to be good then than at 
home. It seems to me that I could be remarkably 
pleasant now, though, traveling. 

Just as likely as not some of the things belonging to 


156 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

the different families of the children of Israel would 
get mixed up during moving, and those poor Israelites 
would have ever so many good chances for quarrel- 
ing, even if there weren’t any gasoline-stoves in those 
days. I read once an old saying. It was, They 
who travel much are seldom sanctified.” I don’t 
know wdiether that is true or not, but I suppose 
that some of us who stay at home are not as patient 
as we might be. 

But it’s hard work to be patient with all kinds of 
people. I don’t see how mamma can be patient with 
that Mr. Bentley who boards here. He is a young 
slip of a fellow who goes to college and tliinks he 
knows every thing. He always reminds me of 
that old song — 

“ 0, I have been to college, 0 ! . 

While I was there 
Completely bare 

I stripped the tree of knowledge, 0 1 ” 

I read a Persian proverb once. I believe in it, 
too. “ A pound of learning requires ten pounds of 
common sense to apply it.” That young fellow may 
get the learning, but I don’t believe he will ever 
have common sense. 

Why can’t folks talk about something besides dis- 


Kitty’s Journal. 


157 


eases, I wonder, when they come to visit sick people ? 
Grandma Grigsby brought a friend of hers in here 
the other day, and they sat and talked about diseases 
enough to fill a doctor’s book. 

Grandma Grigsby’s friend, whoever she was, was 
a very talkative individual. Her husband keeps a 
drug store, so I suppose she thinks she knows all 
about medicine. But she is enough to ruin her hus- 
band’s business, I should think. What did she say 
once, but announce with an air of wisdom, Cancer 
is an insect I ” 

I received a letter from Mr. Dayton to-day. He 
advises me to be patient and resigned, of course. I 
don’t see how he dares write to either mamma or my- 
self. He needn’t think mamma will board him for 
nothing. Though we haven’t seen him for years, I 
know he’s the same person he used to be. His letter 
reminded me of what AYidow Bedott wrote to the 
elder when he was sick — 

“ But sickness and affliction 
Are sent by a wise creation, 

And always ought to be underwent 
By patience and resignation.” 

AFTERNOON. 

Mamma’s servant — the new one, that jiasn’t broken 
sixteen cups and fourteen platters yet — brought me 


158 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

a Catholic paper to read. She’s from the isle of 
Erin, and is as good-hearted as any body who ever 
was as green as the sod of the Emerald Isle. 

Well, I took her paper and looked at it, just to 
please her. I didn’t suppose there would he any 
thing in it that I should care for, but up in one 
corner was this hymn, or poem, or whatever you 
call it. There wasn’t any name signed to it, but I 
guess that whoever wrote it was a real Christian. 
Anyway I liked the lines so much that I asked 
Bridget if I might cut them out, and she said 
Yis,” so here they are : 

WHEN, WHERE, AND HOW. 

I. 

“0 Lord! in some dim future year. 

In some dim future month and day, 

Abides the hour, the solemn hour. 

When Thou shalt call my soul away. 

That year, that month, that day of days, 

Come soon — come late — I know not when, 

0 Thou, who rulest all my ways. 

Master of Life whom Deatli obeys, 

Be with me then ! Be with me then I 


II. 

“ Somewhere upon this globe of ours 
Is hid the spot where I must die. 

Where ’mid the snows or ’mid the flowers 
My shrouded form shall coffined lie ; 


Kitty’s Jouenal. 


159 


If North or South — if East or West — 

At home — abroad — I know not where, 

0 tender Fattier, Lord of grace I 
Whose presence fills the realm of space, 

Be with me there 1 Be with me there 1 

III. 

“By fire — by flood — by famine sore — 

By sudden stroke — by slow decay — 

When Death’s dark angel opes my door, 

How shall it call my soul away? 

God only knows; he bends the bow, 

At.d he alone can fix the dart; 

Yet care I not when, where, or how 
The end may come, dear Lord, if thou 
Wilt then but shield me in thy heart ! ” 

Isn’t that the kind of a hymn tliat one might 
think some old monk might have composed in those 
far-away days before the corruption of Mariolatry 
laid hold of the Roman Church ? I shall keep that 
hymn, though I got it from a queer source. The lines 
express what I have felt so often. I am not at all 
afraid of dying. I know that some Christians seem 
to be afraid, but I do not think I have ever been, 
since I was a Christian. And so I have never been 
able to comprehend why such a man as Baxter 
should speak of finding that among so many 
Christians, who could do and suffer much for Christ, 
there are yet so few that can willingly die.” And 


160 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

he goes on to say, speaking of himself and other 
Christians, I should judge, “ Do not our daily fears 
of death make our lives a continual torment ? ” 

Why, no, they don’t. That is, I don’t have any 
such daily fears.” I don’t mean by this that I am 
better than other people who do fear death. But, 
some way, I don’t see what there is in it to be afraid 
of — for a Christian. 

I don’t care to die. I’m in no particular hurry 
about it. But that hymn just expresses my feelings. 
It’s the living^ though, that troubles me, the living 
in this helpless state. 

May be that’s the kind of trouble I need, instead 
of worrying about dying. I suppose it must be, or 
things wouldn’t be this way. Bat it requires sharp 
eyes sometimes to see just how “ all things work to- 
gether for good to them that love God.” 

JUTjT 30. 

I do not believe that I should have ever made a 
decently good missionary. Here I have been sitting 
Sunday after Sunday in this chair, reading to myself, 
and I haven’t done one thing, a single thing^ toward 
teaching the children of these boarders how Sunday 
ought to be kept. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


161 


I never thought, Kitty Hunter, that you were 
very bright, but the depths of stupidity that you 
have exhibited amaze me. You were perfectly well 
aware that most of the boys of this house never go to 
Sunday-school, and that Billy Barlow has no more 
compunction about playing marbles and flying kites 
on Sunday than if it were any other day. And you 
know that the gasoline-stove woman’s little girl never 
goes to Sunday-school ; and yet you haven’t done any 
thing about it. 

It was a new little girl that opened my eyes yes- 
terday. A new lady with a child came late Saturday 
night, and I did not see them arrive. But Sunday 
afternoon, as I sat by this window, around the corner 
of the house came the gasoline-stove woman’s little 
girl and this new child. The gasoline girl was jump- 
ing rope and talking at the same time. 

“ Miss Kitty’s sick all the time,” I heard her say, 
in a shrill voice. “ I guess she’s cross. I’ve been by 
her window lots of times, and skipped rope just to 
’muse her, and she never speaks nor nothin’. ” 

Then the two children went on out of sight, and I 
sank back into my chair. 

“ I detest that child,” I said to myself. 

But about half an hour afterward I was startled 
11 


162 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

by a sound at the screen-door, and, turning, I saw the 
new little girl peeping in at me. 

“0,” I said to myself, impatiently, “I wonder if 
that child is going to be as much of a nuisance as the 
others are.” 

Poo’ lady ! ” said a childish voice, “ are you 
sick ? ” 

“Yes,” I nodded. “Don’t hold that screen-door 
open. You’ll let in the flies.” 

Well, if that child didn’t take that remark for an 
invitation to come in ! 

She slammed the screen-door and ran to me, smil- 
ing up into my face. She is a beautiful child, with 
big brown eyes and curly yellow hair. I opened my 
lips to scold about slamming that door. But I 
couldn’t say it. I kissed her, instead. 

“Can’t you walk?” she said. “'You’re just like 
my cat. She couldn’t walk at all. A bad boy hit 
her and broke her leg. And my papa took her away, 
and I never saw her again. Did a boy hit you too ? ” 

The child told me that her name is “Blusie,” 
though what that can be a contraction of I can’t 
imagine. 

And when I asked her if she went to Sabbath- 
school, she shook her head. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


163 


Once I did, when we lived in tlie city,” she said. 
‘‘I went two times to the — the Medicine Church. 
But I don’t never go any more anywhere.” 

“ Which church ? ” I asked. 

“ The Medicine church,” answered Blusie, confi- 
dently. 

Are you sure it wasn’t Methodist ? ” I asked, 
smiling. 

Blusie looked a little puzzled. 

‘‘Don’t know,” she said, slowly. finh it was 
Medicine. There was a Sunday boy, and he gave us 
picture cards, and I losed my way going home, and 
a peace man found me, and mamma didn’t let me 
go again.” 

“ And did they teach you about Jesus ? ” I asked. 

Blusie nodded. 

“ I guess so,” she said. 

Well, after talking to Blusie a little while, I came 
to the conclusion that the “ two times ” in which she 
had been taught in Sabbath-school had not been 
supplemented by any times of teaching at home. 
The child seemed to be a bright, wide-awake little 
thing, but I was astonished at her ignorance in relig- 
ious things. Why, she is just like a little heathen ! 

I began to tell her something about Jesus, and 


164 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

suddenly I thought of that big picture Bible that I 
used to tug around that month when I was a book- 
agent. The Bible was on the book-case at the other 
end of the room, but with a little directing Blusie 
found the book and brought it to me. 

And then that child sat beside me, with her eyes 
fixed on the pictures, and she listened, and listened, 
till I thought she must be tired, and I stopped. 

“ Let’s do it some more,” she pleaded, and on I 
went, picture after picture, from the manger to the 
cross. 

Blusie sat with her big brown eyes solemnly fixed 
on the book and on me till the very end. 

And even then she did not seem to be tired. But 
O, such questions as that child asked, and such 
things as she told me when I was talking to her 
about our Saviour 1 It was all new to her. I think 
that Blusie’s mother must be a heathen herself. I 
asked Blusie if she said any prayer, morning or night, 
and she answered, “Ko, I don’t know any. But Kita 
prays when she comes to my house to stay all night.” 

“Nita” turned out to be a sort of little cousin of 
Blusie’s, and Blusie had a hope that, by and by, when 
she was as ‘‘ big as Kita,” she should know a prayer, 
too. The poor child ! 


Kitty’s Journal. 


165 


Well, I taught Blusie “ Kow I lay me,” and she 
learned it so quickly that I was astonished. 

I’d better say that every night, bettern’t I ? ” she 
asked. 

She seemed to be relieved to think that now she 
knew as much as Kita. I thought that Blusie did 
not take in the spiritual significance of the thing so 
much as she did the idea that it was a species of un- 
pardonable ignorance not to know how to pray. 
She wanted to know as much as any one. She 
couldn’t bear the idea of being thought stupid, 
whether it was in arithmetic or praying. She told 
me that she knows her alphabet and can read some 
and count ‘‘ up to a hundred.” 

I tried to impress her a little more by telling her 
that she could pray to God in her own words, and 
ask him to forgive her when she did wrong. 

“ Do you ? ” asked she innocently, looking at me 
with those beautiful brown eyes, How do you do it ?” 

Dear little Blusie ! It seems so easy for her to 
talk about such things. They are so new and strange 
to her, and she has not yet reached that stage when 
children grow shy of speaking of such matters. She 
believes every word I tell her. If she could only 
be taught now, how good she might become ! 


16G A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

I was quite tired, for I am not used to talking so 
long, but I told Blusie to come again next Sunday, 
and I would tell her some more, and see how much 
she remembered about the Bible pictures. 

I heard her afterward in the yard telling the 
gasoline-stove woman’s little girl about “ Miss Kit- 
ten’s picture book,” and the gasoline-stove little girl 
answered rather enviously, “ Well, wdiy ain’t she 
showed it to me ? I’ve been here lots longer than you 
have, and she’s went and showed it to you the very 
first day. I think it’s real mean.” 

Poor little gasoline-stove girl ! I wonder why I 
haven’t shown her that book. Kever did I think, 
when I slammed that book down after my month of 
tugging it around in the sun and rain, and said, 
“ There ! I’ll never have to trouble with that again ; 
I never want to see it,” that some day I should be 
very glad to have it in the house and use it to in- 
terest a little girl in the Bible. For I know I 
couldn’t have interested Blusie half so much without 
the pictures to look at. 

But the thouglit that troubles me is, ‘‘ How many 
of all the children who liave come to this house and 
have gone away again have been as ignorant of the 
Bible as Blusie is ? How many poor little heathen 


KriTY’s Journal. 16T 

have come almost into my room, and yet I have 
never tried to teach them ? ” 

Kitty Hunter, may be there’s a kind of ‘‘ mission- 
ary call ” for you, different from the one you used to 
think about, and yet a call that is as real a one as 
that. At least so it seems now. Blusie is a 
heathen. I told her that the first man’s name was 
Adam, and she said, Was he a police officer ? ” 

AUGUST 6. 

‘‘ Change of place brings us no nearer God ; but 
where thou art, God can come to thee, if only the 
inn of thy soul is ready.” 

Gregory of Nyssa wrote those words nearly fifteen 
hundred years ago, and yet I never read them till 
this morning. I like to liave something to tliink 
about Sunday mornings, but I guess Bishop Gregory 
would have been surprised if he had known tliat 
what he wrote was going to be thought about by a 
girl one Sunday so long after he was dead. I wonder 
if he might not even be a little happier in heaven if 
he knew that still his words help people on earth. 

I wonder if Effie knows him. I wonder how 
many of those we used to talk about she sees and is 
acquainted with now. It doesn’t seem to me that peo- 


168 A Piece of Kfity Hunter’s Life. 


pie can get acquainted with every body all at once in 
heaven. I should think they would keep finding 
out about each other and knowing more and more 
people all the time. 

I didn’t suppose that other folks wondered about 
heaven the way I do. I didn’t think they were so 
foolish. For, of course, it isn’t particularly wise to 
be always asking one’s self questions that can never 
be answered in this world. So I was quite surprised 
to open a book the other day and find an old professor 
of theology wondering about the same things that 
I had been puzzling over. This is what he wrote : 
“ By extended and familiar intercourse with the ce- 
lestial inhabitants it cannot be otherwise but that in- 
teresting discoveries will be made continually ; and 
the unexpected recognition of old friends may be one 
of the sources of pleasure which will render heaven 
so pleasant.” 

And then the old professor goes on to speak of the 
desire we shall have “ to form an acquaintance with 
the most remarkable personages who have lived, from 
Adam downward.” 

But toward the end of such imaginings the man 
seems to recollect himself, and he writes : “ But me- 
thinks we are in danger of indulging our imagina- 


Kitty’s Journal. 


169 


tions too far, and of transferring to a lieavenly state 
too many of the feelings and associations of our earthly 
condition.” 

And he goes on to say that “ every redeemed soul, 
upon being admitted into heaven, will for a wliile be 
so completely absorbed in the contemplation” of 
Christ as to be “ incapable of paying much attention 
to any others.” 

How far away from Gregory of Kyssa my pen has 
wandered ! Is it wrong to write in one’s journal on 
Sunday, I wonder ? I don’t generally do it. - Still, 
I don’t know that it is harmful to spend a little time 
that way if one writes on religious things. But it 
seems to me that reading is often more conducive to 
making the “ inn of my soul ” ready,” than writing 
is. It’s so easy for one’s pen to skip off to something 
that isn’t very Sunday-like. One picks out one’s 
reading with more care. 


Ma has two new boarders. I think from their ap- 
pearance that they are going to be the most pleasant 
people we have had in the house. Their names are 
Mr. and Mrs. Whitcomb, but she calls him either 
“ Kathan ” or “ the deacpu,” and he always calls her 


170 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

“Sally.” They are old-fashioned people, but very 
good, I think. 

Grandma Grigsby brought Mrs. Whitcomb in to 
see me, and it was very easy work getting acquainted. 
There’s such a difference in people about that. 
Some people one never feels acquainted with, no 
matter how many times one sees them, and other 
people one understands right away. 

Grandma Whitcomb is the latter kind. After her 
visit was over I watched her down the steps, and as 
I smiled to myself over some of her sayings, I remem- 
bered what Dr. Samuel Finley is said to have said 
when a person told him that he would find in heaven 
“ old friends, and many old-fashioned people.” 

“Yes, sir,” he said, with a smile; “but they are a 
most polite people now.” 

Well, I think Grandma Whitcomb has a good deal 
of real politeness inside of her. She came in here 
again a few days after that first visit. She said she 
had been “ scurriping about ” trying to do some er- 
rands, and she would like to sit down and rest, if i 
didn’t mind her company. I was rather glad to see her, 
for I had the blues. I think I must have said some- 
thing, or looked something, that gave her a hint of 
how I felt, for pretty soon she went to talking about 


Kitty’s Journal. 


171 


the Lord’s being able to help us out of all kinds of 
trouble, and she said she was afraid that a good many 
Christians don’t tell their worries to the Lord at all. 
She said she heard of a woman once who began a 
prayer this way, ‘‘Now, Lord, listen. I’ve got lots 
of troubles that you don’t know any thing about.” 

“I’m afraid,” said Grandma Whitcomb, “that 
some of us say that in our hearts, if we don’t out 
loud. And then we don’t tell Him about our faults, 
either. ’ Taint much use trying to get rid of sins 
if we don’t ask his help. I remember once how I 
learned that. 

“ ‘ I’m going to kill them,’ said I to Nathan, one 
Sunday. 

“ ‘ Who ?’ asked Nathan, looking shocked. 

“ ‘ The Amalekites,’ said I. 

“ ‘ Who be tliey ? ’ asked Nathan. 

“ And then I remembered that he hadn’t been to 
church that morning, owing to toothache. 

“So I just explained to him what the minister 
said. You see, he preached us a sermon about Saul, 
and those sinners, the Amalekites, that the Lord told 
him to ‘ utterly destroy,’ and about how Saul spared 
Agag and didn’t kill him. 

“And the minister said that he was afraid that 


172 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

some of us church folks were just like Saul, because 
we didn’t fight our Amalekifces. Our sins were our 
Amalekites, you know, according to the minister, and 
he said that he was ’most afraid that instead of our kill- 
ing all our Amalekites, some of us didn’t even know 
where our Amalekites lived, and he was pretty sure 
that a good many of us let that biggest Amalekite, 
Agag, live. Well, those weren’t just the minister’s 
words, but then that’s what he meant. 

“ When I’d explained it all out to Hathan, he sat 
still a minute, and then he got up laughing, and says 
he, ‘Well, Sally, you’ll have a tough job killing old 
Agag, I reckon.’ 

“ How, that made me mad, for I didn’t think I had 
any Agag to kill. I wasn’t certain but there might 
be two or three of the common, not-much-account 
kind of Amalekites for me to fight with, but as for 
such a big fellow as Agag, I was mighty certain that 
I hadn’t any such. 

“ And so I spoke out sharp, and said I, ‘ Nathan 
Whitcomb, some folks had better look to home ! ’ 

“ And then he went out. 

“ While I cleared ofi the dishes, I felt real pes- 
tered becaused I’d spoken sharp to Nathan ; for he 
wasn’t a professor then, and I was; and yet most 


Kitty’s Journal. 


173 


days lie was a sight pleasanter-spoken than I. But 
then it was too aggravating to tell me to my face 
that I’d got to tussle with Agag, when I was sure I 
hadn’t. 

“ When Monday morning came, first thing, if I 
didn’t find out that I hadn’t a mite of soap in the 
house ! It was dreadful trying ; for I’d got my 
boiler on, and was going to have the clothes out 
early. There wasn’t any body but me to go for 
that soap, so I had to change my dress, and run 
down-town to the store, and by the time I got home 
again, I was hot, and mad, and tired. How in the 
world I forgot about that soap, I don’t know, but I’d 
had company Saturday, and I suppose that put it out 
of my head. 

“Well, Monday was a dreadful weathery day. 
There was the hottest kind of a dry wind, and it 
blew dust, and I’d always noticed that that kind of 
a wind blew cross words out of my mouth too. 

“ The sheet I hung on the line would fall and get 
in the dirt, and the wind blew so that I couldn’t 
make the rake stand that I’d put under the clothes- 
line to push it up. And I remember that the stove- 
door didn’t shut the way I wanted it to, and I gave 
it a bang that ’most brought the stove down. And 


174 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

one of the children next door borrowed my broom, 
and I looked out in a minute and saw her sweeping 
away at the ashes and black stuff that were left from 
a fire they’d had in their back yard. And that riled 
me more; for the broom was all black and wet ; but 
it did wash off easy enough. I’d left a room till 
Monday to be swept, and I did sweep it in spite of 
the dust. And the wind blew right on my biggest 
fuchsia in the front yard, and broke its stem off. 
And it was so hot that it was easier to be mad than 
not to. 

And so at dinner, when the spoon to the apple- 
sauce tumbled in, handle and all, I just couldn’t stand 
it, and I sputtered out, ‘ I never saw such an abom- 
inable day in my life ! ’ 

“ And Nathan looked at me, and all he said was, 
‘ Hum ! Amalekites dead yet ? ’ 

“ And, I declare for’t, I was so taken back that I 
didn’t know what to say. Was ‘getting mad’ an 
Amalekite ? 

“Well, the next couple of weeks I watched my- 
self, and it just seemed to me that I never noticed be- 
fore that I said so many sharp things, or got angry 
so easy. And I found out other Amalekites, too, 
but none of them was so big as Agag — I mean tern- 


Kitty’s Journal. 


175 


per. But there were lots of others, and one night I 
was just clean discouraged with myself, and I sat right 
down on the floor beside the churn, and I cried. 
Kathan came in and found me, and he made me tell 
him what the matter was. 

“ And I just sobbed out ‘ It’s them Amalekites ! ’ 

‘‘ Then I told Katlian how I’d tried and tried, and 
failed worse and worse. And, after I’d told him, 
Kathan sat still for a long time, and looked exceed- 
ingly solemn for him. 

“ And then he said, kind of bashful — for I s’pose 
he remembered that I was a church member and he 
wasn’t, and it seemed queer to have the preaching 
come from his side — he said, ‘ Sally, I was lookin’ up 
them Amalekites in the Bible the other day, being 
kind of interested hearing you talk about them, and 
I found a place where it said that once them children 
of Isr’el went out to fight with Amalek. And the 
Lord wasn’t with them that day. I guess they’d for- 
got to do as he said about it. And they got awfully 
whipped. And I — well — may be — don’t you think 
that people who go to fight Amalekites need the 
Lord to help them ? ’ 

And I do declare Kathan’s face was just as red 
as though he’d been saying something wicked! I 


176 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

guess he felt queer to be preacliin’ a regular ortho- 
dox sermon all of a sudden. 

‘‘Well, I think I tried to follow Kathan’s sermon 
after that. And after a long, long time I did learn 
to keep Agag dumb, if he was there just the same. 

“ My little girl. Prissy, was six years old then. 
She had my temper too. And I thought may be 
if I’d begun to fight the Amalekites sooner Prissy 
wouldn’t have heard me say so many things I ought 
not to, and she wouldn’t have got into the way of 
saying cross things herself. Put I told her about 
the Amalekites too, and the child really began to 
try to fight herself. I could see that she did. It 
made me think about what the Bible says of the 
Lord’s ‘warring with Amalek from generation to 
generation.’ 

“ One day, quite a spell after that, Kathan made 
another speech that sort of surprised me. Strange 
how we Christians are mostly surprised when our 
prayers are answered ; isn’t it ? 

“ ‘ Sally,’ says he, ’tisn’t fair for you to do all the 
fighting. And, if the Lord will help me. I’m going 
to look after my own Amalekites. I think it’s time.” 

“ That was years and years ago, but I’ll never for- 
get how glad I was that day. Nathan and I are old 


Kitty’s Journal. 


177 


folks now, and yesterday he said to me, ‘ Sally, I 
guess your Agag’s dead ; isn’t he ? I don’t see any 
more of him.’ 

“And I looked up at Katlian, and says I, ‘ He isn’t 
dead yet, Hathan, but I hope the day’s coining when 
he will be “ hewed in pieces before the Lord.” ’ ” 

Grandma Whitcomb wiped her eyes, and went 
softly out of my room. And as I watched the dear 
old lady going down my steps and on through the 
yard, I thought to myself how little I should ever 
have suspected that she had had to fight against an evil 
temper. She’s a brave old lady to confess it, anyway, 
more brave than Payson or Alexander thought most 
of us are. I don’t mean Alexander the Great, but 
that Dr. Archibald Alexander who wrote Thoughts 
on Religious Experience. I was reading that book 
Sunday morning, and I came across these words, 
which were given by the w'riter as those of Kev. Ed- 
ward Payson, and with which I suppose Dr. Alex- 
ander agreed : 

“We never confess any faults that we really think 
disgraceful. We complain of our hardness of heart, 
stupidity, etc., but we never confess envy, covetous- 
ness, and revenge, or any thing that we suppose will 

lower us in the opinion of others ; and this proves 
12 


178 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

that we do not feel ashamed of coldness and stupid- 
ity. In short, when young Christians make confes- 
sions, unless there is an obvious call for it, it com- 
monly proceeds from one of the following motives : 
either they wish to be thought very humble, and to 
possess great knowledge of their own hearts ; or they 
think it is a fault which the other has perceived, and 
they are willing to have the credit of having discov- 
ered and striven against it ; or they confess some 
fault from which they are remarkably free, in order 
to elicit a compliment.” 

SEPTEMBER 10. 

Grandma Grigsby has left Baxter’s Saints* Rest 
in here all this time. Occasionally I pick the book 
up. I did to-day, and read this : “ I conclude, then, 
that whatsoever it is to those that are left behind, 
yet the saints’ departure is to themselves usually 
seasonable. I say usually, because I know that even 
a saint may have a death in some respect unseason- 
able, even though it translate him to heaven. He 
may die in .judgment, as good Josiah. He may die 
for his sin. He may die by the hand of public jus- 
tice ; or die in a way of public scandal. He may die 
in a weak degree of grace, and, consequently, have 


Kitty’s Jottki^al. 


179 


a less degree of glory. But yet it will ordinarily Le 
found that the righteous ‘come to the grave as a 
shock of corn fully ripe ; ’ and you may often observe 
that in the ordinary course of God’s dealings he pur- 
posely makes his people’s last hour in this life to be, 
of all others, though to the flesh most bitter, yet to 
the spirit most sweet.” 

I tliink that was the way with Effle and papa. 

SEFTEMBEK 16. 

Blusie came in full of excitement yesterday. 
Grandma Whitcomb had taken her witli her to 
church and let her stay to the “ truly Sunday-stool.” 

Blusie informed me that she was put into the 
“ infident ” class, and after a while she saw a picture 
that looked like one I showed her. 

Blusie evidently had some problem on her mind, 
for after a while she said, “ Say — ” 

“ What is it ? ” I asked, encouragingly. 

“When God looks down out of the sky, you 
know,” said Blusie, “ do we look just like little 
specks, or are we just our own size ? ” 

“Why?” I asked. 

“’Cause,” said Blusie, “Bobby Simmons says that 
may be God can make us look big or little to him, 


180 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

just as he chooses. And I wanted to know; ’cause 
if every body looks like specks, I’m ’fraid God wont 
see me at all. Bobby says even fat, fat Mr. Smith 
wouldn’t look like more’n a pin if any body looked at 
him out of the sky ; and I’m ever so much littler ! ” 

Poor Blusie ! She looked very sober, and she 
seemed very much happier after I told her that I 
was sure that God saw her all the time and would 
not skip” her. But I tried to impress upon her that, 
as God saw her, she must never do any thing wrong. 

I went on talking to her about Jesus, when sud- 
denly Blusie internipted me. 

“ Did you live when Jesus did ? ” she asked. 

“ Why, no,” said I, quite startled at the question. 

I fought may be you did, you’re so old,” said 
Blusie, meditatively. “ Kora said she fought may 
be you did, ’cause I told her you knew ever so much 
about him.” 

“ Who is Kora?” I asked. 

‘‘ A girl I know,” said Blusie. She lives in a 
tent down by the lak^. And they liave twenty-eight 
pigs, only they haven’t got them now. A man came 
and told them they had to sell them if they lived in 
this city. And, don’t you think. Kora had one 
white pig named Toby, and she had to sell him. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


181 


Wasn’t that too bad ? Just when she had taught him 
to stand up on his hind legs a little while.” 

“ I don’t think Kora’s got a nice mamma, at all,” 
went on Blusie, after a moment’s pause. You know 
Kora has red hair, and her mamma says she’s the 
homeliest little girl in this State, and Kora says she 
can’t help it, ’cause God made her so. Isn’t it too 
bad?” 

“ And O, Miss Kitten,” cried Blusie, before I 
could answer her question, carCt poor people go to 
heaven ? Kora says her mamma says only rich folks 
go to heaven, and poor folks can’t go. Can’t they ? ” 

I tried to explain to Blusie that neither riches nor 
poverty has any thing to do with our fitness for heav- 
en, and that only Christ can make us fit to go there. 

Blusie listened intently, and drew a long breath of 
relief when she fairly understood my meaning. 

“ That’s nice,” she said. “ I’m going to tell Kora, 
next time I see her.” 

Blusie trotted out of the door, humming a little 
song, and I thought how sad it is for the child that 
she has to bring such questions to me, instead of to 
her mother. I do not believe that her mother ever 
speaks to her about such things. To think that the 
child should ask me if I lived when Christ did ! 


182 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

Sometimes, when Blusie is questioning me, I wonder 
if some of the questions tliat we ask of tlie Lord do 
not seem as childish to him as Blusie’s do to me. 
And yet they are often questions that trouble us very 
much ; and how patiently he answers them ! 

JANTTAKY 6. 

Journal, I haven’t even dared to write down in you 
the experiment I tried four or five weeks ago. But, 
now that it has succeeded, I will tell you all about it. 

I had been looking over an old scrap-book of mine 
and I found those two stories that I wrote before 
papa died. I read them through, and I noticed that 
I had written on the second one the w’ords, ‘‘ Beceived 
three dollars.” 

“ O,” said I to myself, how I wish I could write 
another story and get three dollars for it ! ” 

But I couldn’t think of another. I tried for 
several days, and then I gave it up. 

‘‘ It’s no use,” I said to myself, in disgust. “ I 
needn’t ever think I can do any thing.” 

Well, a few days after that, I was looking over a 
paper that ma had brought in. The paper had an 
agricultural department, and it said up at the top 
that the agricultural editor would be glad of articles. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


183 


“ I wonder if they pay any thing for such things,” 
said I to myself as I looked over the agricultural 
articles. 

They were about hay and cabbages, and things 1 
didn’t know much about, but I noticed one article 
about dowers. 

And I then and there made the bold resolve that I 
would write that paper an article on “ ferns.” 

“ Why shouldn’t I ?” I said. “ I used to raise them, 
and I can look up things in the books.” 

I kept my plan a great secret from nia. Only I 
made her put my chair over by the book-case instead 
of by the window. Ma thought I was going to read, 
but I asked her for pencil and paper and ink and pen, 
and she put the little table by me, and left me to my 
own devices. 

How I did work over that article ! I told all I 
knew about ferns, and then I looked up the various 
legends and traditions about ferns. In fact I became 

o 

quite learned on the subject. I had never looked at 
half of papa’s books. I’m glad we never sold any of 
them. Well, I found out about that queer fern the 
German people call “ Irrkraut.” The book I found 
that in said that the Germans think that if any one 
walks over this fern in the woods he will be likely 


184 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

to lose his way, and wander about, unless he stops and 
changes his shoes by putting the one that was on his 
right foot on his left, and the left shoe on his right. 
And I found out about the Kussian peasants hunting 
for flowering ferns on St. John’s Eve. And about that 
saying' of the English of one who has freckles, ‘‘ She 
has ‘ fernticles ’ on her face,” because it is thought that 
freckles look like the fern spores, or ‘ fernticles.’ 

I worked over that article a whole week. I fussed 
over the work, and copied, and recopied, and ma 
never found out any thing about it because she was 
so busy ; and at last I wrote a letter to the paper in- 
closing my manuscript, and boldly demanding pay if 
my article were accepted. I bribed Billy wdth a 
doughnut to take my letter to the post-office and mail 
it. Ma thought that I ate that doughnut myself. I 
didn’t want to deceive her, so I told her about it 
afterward. But I didn’t want to then, and I did 
want to give Billy something ; althougli he is so good- 
hearted that I’ve no doubt he would have mailed the 
letter for nothing. 

And then I waited. O, liow long the days and 
weeks were ! 

“ They’ve thrown that article in the waste-basket, 
or used it to light the fire,” said I to myself, after I 


Kitty’s Journal. 


185 


had waited three weeks — “Kitty Hunter, why will 
yon persist in trying to do any thing in the world, 
when yon know very well yon can’t ? ” 

And all the time I didn’t tell ma any thing. 

Well, the days went on, and one morning, after I 
had given np ever hearing from my ventnre, the 
postman walked np to the door and left a paper and 
a letter for me. Grandma Grigsby bronght them in. 
She wonld stay and read me an extract from a sermon 
she had fonnd that she thongbt was appropriate to 
me. I could hardly wait for her to get through, I 
was in snch a hurry to open my letter. I knew it 
was from that paper, becanse its name was printed np 
in the left-hand corner of that envelope. 

Grandma Grigsby was tlirongh at last, and before 
her foot tonched the last step of my stairs I had that 
letter torn open. And ont tnmbled a piece of white 
paper reqnesting me to “ accept the inclosed check for 
five dollars, being payment for yonr article on ‘ Ferns,’ 
published in this week’s number of our paper.” 

And there, in the paper, was my article ! 

O, didn’t I have a jubilee all by myself ! And 
didn’t I hide that check and paper and assume a 
demure look when ma came with my dinner ! And 
wasn’t I almost too thankful to eat ! 


186 A Piece of Kitty Huntee’s Life. 

But I bided my time. Ma came in that night, 
tired out as usual, and she brought out her account- 
book and began to add np figures. 

After a while she sighed, and I said, ‘‘Are the 
bills bigger than you thought ? ” 

“ The butcher’s bill is,” she said ; “ I had hoped 
we could pay him entirely this time ; But I think 
we shall have to owe him three dollars still. I can’t 
spare the whole.” 

And then, do you think, O my Journal, that this 
most dutiful daughter arose, like the heroine in a 
novel, and said, “ Behold what wealth I bring to 
your feet ? ” 

Ko, I didn’t. 

The dramatic moment had come, but unfortu- 
nately I wasn’t equal to it. What I did was to 
begin to cry, toss the letter into ma’s lap, and sob 
out something unintelligible about a doughnut. 

“ What ? ” cried ma, unfolding my letter with haste. 

And after she had read it she didn’t know any 
better what I meant than she did before. So as soon 
as I could talk decently I began at the beginning and 
explained matters. 

Well, Journal, I can’t tell you how astonished ma 
was. And when I produced the paper ma would 


Kitty’s Journal. 


187 


put on her spectacles and read my piece straight 
through. And she utterly refused to take my money 
for tlie butcher until I frightened her by declaring 
that if she didn’t do it I wouldn’t drink any more 
beef-tea. Then she regretfully took the check and 
put it away. Kext day she cashed it, and brought 
me the butcher’s receipted bill. And she wouldn’t 
take the fifth dollar at all, so it’s in my purse now. 
So anyhow, Kitty Hunter, if you are a good-for- 
nothing you’ve helped pay one bill, and may be you’ll 
do such a thing again some day. 

Anyway, ma and I had a little dinner all by our- 
selves next day, in honor of the remarkable occur- 
rence. And as I, with exceedingly improper table 
manners, reached across the table to get a piece of 
bread on my fork and bear it aloft to my plate, I 
said, ‘‘ In this manner will I reach out and fork the 
cash from the editors.” 

And ma destroyed the beauty of my simile by in- 
quiring, “And give them nothing in return ?” 

But that isn’t what I meant at all. I’m going to 
try to give them the very best of my brains in re- 
turn. I can’t think of anything else but scribbling, 
now that I have received some money for that oper- 
ation. Every morning ma lets me sit by the book- 


188 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

case with the big dictionary on a chair near by, and 
my table next to me. And I have a good time all by 
myself. I’m never lonesome any more. O, I do 
hope the editors will like what I write ! 

MAY 8. 

I heard Mr. Whitcomb tell a story the other day. 
I don’t generally listen to things that are not meant 
for my ears, but how can one help doing so some- 
times ? 

Mr. Whitcomb, or the deacon,” as ma and I call 
him, from the title his wife usually applies to him, 
had come out on the piazza and was reading his relig- 
ious newspaper. Our minister came to see ma about 
something, and, going out again, stopped to talk wnth 
the deacon. They were so near that I could hear all 
they said. I coughed, and made a noise with my 
books, but the two men didn’t seem to take any hint. 
I guess they didn’t care if I did hear. There wasn’t 
any special secret about their conversation. 

The deacon read a paragraph aloud from his paper, 
and the two men began to discuss it. It was some- 
thing about stinginess. I didn’t pay much attention 
to what they said till Mr. Whitcomb began to talk 
about himself. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


189 


‘‘Yes,” said the deacon, “there’s many a man that 
calls himself honest that’s never so much as inquired 
what amount of debts heaven’s hooks are going to 
show against him. I’ve learned that. There were 
years in my life when I hardly gave a cent to the Lord 
without begrudging it. And I’ve wondered since what 
I’d ever have talked about if I’d gone to heaven in 
those days, for I couldn’t talk about any thing but 
bargains and money-getting here, and those wouldn’t 
have been suitable subjects up yonder. 

“ I know I read once about one of the kings of En- 
gland, Edward the First, who had an officer called the 
lord high almoner, and one of the things that man 
had to do was to ‘ remind the king of the duty of 
almsgiving.’ 

“ I’ve thought to myself many a time that it would 
be well for a good many folks nowadays if they had 
King Edward’s almoner to stir them up to give. Kot 
to the poor only, I mean, but to all the needs of the 
cause of Christ. There are lots of people besides the 
children of Israel that need a Moses to say to them, 
‘ It is he that giveth thee power to get wealth.’ I’ve 
always thought that was a grand thing in David, when 
he’d done such a job, getting together that pile of 
gold and silver for the temple, to just turn to the 


190 


A Piece of Kittt Hunter’s Life. 

Lord, and say, ‘ All these things come from thee, and 
of thine own have we given thee.’ Most men would 
have wanted a little credit for the pains they’d taken 
themselves. 

^‘Well, in those years I was telling you about, it 
was dreadful how I cheated the Lord out of his due. 
Once in a long while I paid a little to our church, but 
I didn’t give a cent to any thing else. Foreign mission 
Sunday was my rheumatic day, reg’lar, and I didn’t 
get to church. Home mission day was headache day 
with me always, and I stayed away from meetin’. 
Bible Society day I’d gen’rally a touch of neuralgy 
so’t I didn’t feel like goin’ out, and I stayed home. 
Tract Society day I’d begin to be afraid I was goin’ 
to be deaf, and oughtn’t to be out in the wind, so I 
stayed in-doors ; and on the Sunday for helping the 
Publication Society, like as not my corns were un- 
usual troublesome, and I didn’t feel able to get out. 

“ Wife wanted to take a religious paper once, but 
I wouldn’t hear to’t. Told her that was nonsense. 
I didn’t believe any of the apostles ever took relig- 
ious papers. The Bible was enough for them, and it 
ought to be for other folks. 

“ And yet I never even thought I wasn’t doin’ 
right. I’d come into it sort of gradual, and didn’t 


Kitty’s Journal. 191 

think much about giving, anyhow, except as a sort of 
losing business. 

‘‘Well, my little girl Kannie was about eight years 
old then, and I was dreadful proud of her, for she 
was a smart little thing. One Sunday night we were 
sitting by the fire, and Kannie’d been saying her cat- 
echism, and by and by slie got kind of quiet and sober, 
and all of a sudden she turned to me, and said she, 
‘ Pa, will we have to pay rent in heaven ? ’ 

“ ‘ What ? ^ said I, looking down at her, rather as- 
tonished. 

“ ‘ Will we have to pay rent in heaven ? ’ said she 
again. 

“ ‘ Why, no,’ said I. ‘ What made you think that, 
my dear ? ’ 

“ Well, I couldn’t get out of her for a time what 
she did mean. Nannie didn’t know much about rent, 
anyway, for we’d never had to pay any, livin’ in our 
own house. But at last I found out that she’d heard 
some men talking about me, and one of them said, 
‘ Well, he’s bound to be awful poor in the next world, 
I reckon. There aint much of his riches laid up in 
heaven.’ And as the only real poor folks that Nan- 
nie’d ever known were some folks down at the village 
that had been turned out of doors because they couldn’t 


192 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

pay tlieir rent, that’s what put it into Kannie’s head 
that may be I’d have to pay rent in heaven. 

‘‘Well, wife went on and talked to Kannie, and ex- 
plained to her about the ‘ many mansions ’ in our 
‘ Father’s house,’ you know, but I didn’t listen much. 
I was mad to think Seth Brown dared to talk about 
me in that way, right before Kannie, too. 

“ I fixed up some pretty bitter things to say to Seth 
the next time I met him, and I wasn’t very sorry to 
see him next day in his cart. 1 began at him right 
ofi. He listened to every thing that I sputtered out, 
and then he said, ‘ Well, deacon, if you think the bank 
of heaven’s got any thing in it for you, I’m glad of it, 
but I’ve never seen you making any deposits.’ And 
then he drove off. 

“ W ell, I walked over to my blackberry patch, and 
sat down and thought, and the more I thought, the 
more I felt. I was angry at first, but I got cooler, 
and I thought of foreign mission Sunday and the 
rheuniatiz, and home mission Sunday and the head- 
ache, and Bible Society day and the neuralgia, and 
tract day and the corns, till it just seemed to me I 
couldn’t stand it any longer, and I knelt down there 
in the blackberry patch, and said, ‘ O Lord, I’ve been 
a stingy man, if ever there was one, and if ever I do 


Kitty’s Journal. 


193 


get to heaven I deserve to have to pay rent, sure 
enough. Help me to give myself, and whatever I’ve 
got, back to thee.’ 

And I believe he’s helped me ever since. ’Twas 
pretty hard work at first, getting to giving. I did 
feel pretty sore over that first dollar I slipped into the 
collection plate ; but I’ve learned better now, and I 
mean to keep on giving ‘ as unto the Lord ’ till I go 
to that heaven where Hannie’s been these twenty 
years.” 

The deacon stopped then. I couldn’t see him from 
my window, but I heard him cough a little, and he 
went away. Good old man ! ISTo one would ever 
think that stinginess had been his besetting sin. I 
thought he hadn’t any. It was only the other day 
that I was applying to him a sentence that I read, A 
cluster of grapes does not as certainly ripen to mellow 
perfection, as does the man who keeps himself under 
the clear shining and summer of God.” 

And I am sure Mr. Whitcomb does that. One can 
see it in his face. O, if all our boarders were like 
him and his wife I don’t believe I should dislike 
them at all ! But there are very few angelic board- 
ers. Which last sentance reminds me that Kitty 

Hunter herself is not quite angelic. / 

13 


194 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

MAY 9. 

I had two rejected manuscripts by this afternoon’s 
mail. One editor informed me that my story would 
have done very well if it had been half as long. The 
other editor merely inclosed a slip whereon a few 
printed lines stated that the article was returned, “ not 
from any lack of merit, but on account of the abun- 
dance of material we have on hand.” 

That’s a very polite way of putting it. The article 
that did not “ lack merit ” was an account written by 
me of the life of Palissy. I wrote it in a story style 
for the children’s column of the paper, but I guess the 
editor thought that bit of biography had been written 
times enough. 

I don’t feel especially cheerful. It isn’t particularly 
enlivening to have one’s articles appear again after 
being sent off — that is, unless they appear in print. 
Of course, if they do that, it’s all right. But to have 
two come home at once is disheartening. 

Journal, I’m going to do something, and don’t you 
ever tell. I’m going to take those two rejected man- 
uscripts, and change them and send them back ! I 
mean, the editor who didn’t get Palissy ” will get it 
this time, and the editor who did get “ Palissy ” will 
get the other story that the other man said was twice 


Kitty's Joiirnal. 


195 


too long. I don’t see how either editor will know that 
any one has ever read the manuscript before, for 
they’re clean and respectable-looking. 

I get into “the blues” dreadfully when I have 
rejected articles. I feel now as if I never could 
write another thing; as if my brain is a complete 
failure. 

But I’m not going to stop writing. Ko, indeed. 
If I were strong and well I believe I’d rather go out 
washing than endure the sufferings I have whenever 
one of my articles comes home in disgrace. But I’m 
not strong and well, and I can’t wash for a living, or 
do any thing else, that I see, except scribble. So I’m 
going to keep on, this year anyway. I’m going to 
write one article every week, and I’m going to do my 
very best with each article. Then, if I’m a failure, 
why at least I shall have done my very best, and 
I’ll cork my ink-bottle and make up my mind not to 
write any more. 

JUNE 1. 

I have had rather a queer result of my “ Sunday- 
stool ” as Blusie calls it. 

Last Sunday afternoon some of the children were 
in here as usual. (I can say “as usual” now, for my 


106 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

Sunday afternoon class has become a regular institu- 
tion, I am glad to say.) 

Some way I spoke of incense,” in telling a Bible 
story, and little “ Goffy ” Bryant cried out, O, I 
know what ‘ incense ’ is ! It's like those bugs that 
Billy keeps in his box.” 

‘‘ Ho ! ” sneered Billy, who is rather inclined to 
scolf at the mistakes of the younger children. “ If I 
didn’t know the difference between ‘ insects ’ and ‘ in- 
cense ’ I’d keep still, Goffy Bryant.” 

I do know,” snapped Goffy, turning red with of- 
fended dignity. “ And you do keep lots of bugs and 
things in that box out by the barn ; you know you do, 
Billy Barlow.” 

“ Shut up,” said Billy filled wdth wrath. 

It was some time before I could quiet my class and 
continue my Bible story. 

But since Sunday I have questioned the children 
a little about those insects,” and when Billy found 
out that I really wanted to see some of them he 
was filled with joy and rushed o£E to bring me his 
treasures. 

Some of them were enough to scare one. Espe- 
cially do I remember two frightful looking green and 
black caterpillars that ate what Billy called “ ladies’ 


Kitty’s Journal. 


197 


tobacco.” These creatures when touched thrust 
out from their heads some yellow horns that shed 
abroad an abominable odor. Some others of his cat- 
erpillars ate nettles, and Billy showed me the blisters 
on his hands caused by his getting food for his pets. 
They have turned into butterflies now, though ; so 
those particular troubles are over. 

Billy has been keeping his insects hidden for fear 
mother should And out about them and not want them 
on the premises. But I told him ma wouldn’t care. 
He said the landlady where he lived before killed a 
lot of bis insects and threw them away, when she 
found them. 

Billy brought bottle after bottle of water-beetles and 
beetle-larvae and dragon-fly larvae, and the other day 
Billy came rushing in with a dragon-fly pupa that had 
climbed out of the water on a stick. 

‘‘He’s going to come out with wings,” squealed 
Billy, dancing with joy. “ I’ve seen them do it be- 
fore. Just you watch. Miss Kitty.” 

And we both watched, and I saw the strangest thing 
I ever saw in my life. That creature caught hold of 
the stick with its six legs, made a hole in the skin of 
its back, and walked out of it ! And then by and by 
its wings spread out and dried, and by the time an 


198 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

hour had passed the beautiful little blue dragon-fly 
was ready to take a sail in the air. 

“ Why, I never knew before where dragon-flies 
came from ! ” said I, in astonishment. 

Billy chuckled as he opened the screen-door and 
let the dragon-fly out. 

“ Lots of people don’t know,” said he, proudly. 
“But this one came out easily. You just ought to 
see some of those bisj dragon-flies, the bio:o;est kind — 
bigger than some butterflies ! Why, sometimes they’ll 
tumble ’round a day or two before they can make 
holes in their skins to get out. And sometimes they 
die without making any holes. I guess that’s when 
their skin’s too tough. Must be awful w’ork making 
a hole in your back.” 

But the greatest treasure that Billy has he did not 
know the name of. He called it a “ stick,” and it 
did look like one. I could hardly believe that it was 
alive, at flrst, till Billy shook the jar of water, and 
the creature swam a little. 

“ I was so surprised when I caught that fellow,” 
said Billy, gleefully. “ Hone of the other boys ever 
found such a thing. Don’t you want me to leave him 
in his bottle in the window so you can watch him 
catch water-bugs and stick them on his beak ? ” 


Kitty’s Journal. 


199 


I accepted Billy’s liandsome offer with gratitude, for 
I had a plan in niy mind. That was so queer an insect, 
wdiy couldn’t I watch it and learn its name, and study 
its habits, and then write about it for some paper? 

That’s what I’m trying to do now. IVe found out 
the scientific name of the bug, anyway. I found the 
name in one of papa’s books. The bug is called 
ranatra. It looks like a little stick with thin long 
legs to it, and it catches other insects and runs its beak 
into them and sucks out the life- juice. 

I wrote a story the other day for that paper that 
published those two stories before papa died. I don’t 
know whether this story will be accepted or not. 
Mamma says I’ll begin to have some more rejected 
manuscipts before long, and I suppose I shall. 

JTTNE 28. 

“ Say ,” said Billy, from the piazza where all the 
children were around him, my uncle Jack’s coming 
home from California next week, and we’ll just have 
lots of fun.” 

‘‘ Is he nice ? ” asked the gasoline-stove woman’s 
little girl, critically. 

“ Of course, he is,” ferociously answered Billy. 
“ He’s lots nicer than you are, miss.” 


200 A Piece of Kiity Hunter’s Life. 

“Well, I hope he will teach you to he polite,” 
scornfully said the gasoline girl. 

At this juncture Blusie interfered. 

“ Uncles are always nice,” said she, impressively. 
“ My uncle wrote me the nicest letter, all about a 
little girl that said her prayers. And every night 
she prayed for her papa and mamma and her cat and 
and her dog and all the little birds in the yard. And 
Uncle Ed said he fought it was nice for her to do 
that, ’cause if she prayed for them she wouldn’t ever 
plague them. O, and she prayed for the big mooly 
cow, too ! ” 

“ Ain’t you ever going to get big enough to say 
‘ thought ? ’ ” asked the gasoline gii’l, with a sniff of 
disdain. “You’re an awful baby, Blusie, always say- 
ing ‘ fought ! ’ ” 

“How you just shut up and stop plaguing Blu- 
sie,” sternly commanded Billy, “or else, if you 
don’t. I’ll send you off before I tell you all about 
the story my uncle Jack wrote to me. It was about 
an awful, awful earthquake-time he had in California, 
and I just wish I’d been there to see it, only I 
couldn’t because I wasn’t alive then. And if you 
don’t shut up, miss, I won’t tell you one word. I’ll 
tell it all to Blusie.” 


Kitty’s Journal. 


201 


The gasoline girl evidently sat down on the piazza 
with a thump. 

“ Will you stop ? ” severely asked Billy. 

The gasoline girl gave a sort of grunt which Billy 
interpreted to suit himself. 

“ Well,” said Billy, ‘‘ this is the way it was.* Un- 
cle Jack told me. He said it was in 1868, and I 
counted up, and I think Uncle Jack must have been 
just about as old as I am now. Well, anyway, he didn’t 
like to go to school very well. Keither did his sister 
Lou. Their mother said it was because they were 
lazy, but I don’t think so ; it was because they liked 
to have a good time. Tliey always did have a good 
time in vacation, and they hated to have to begin 
studying again. 

‘‘Well, one morning they got up, and Lou was 
standing combing her hair and grumbling because 
she had to go to school after breakfast, when, all of 
a sudden, the house began to rock and tumble from 
one side to another, so that folks couldn’t stand up 
straight. 

“ Uncle Jack couldn’t imagine what was the mat- 
ter. He said it felt just as if some big giant or other 

♦The account of this California earthquake of 1868 embodies the 
writer’s own experience. 


202 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

were taking the house and tipping it over. But just 
then he heard his father calling, ‘ Eun ! run ! run ! ’ 
And then, I tell you, they did run, and they 
never stopped till they got to the front gate. Then 
they all held on to the fence, and waited till the 
ground stopped shaking. O, it was perfectly awful ! 
Uncle Jack’s knees shook so he could hardly stand 
up, and he felt dreadfully queer and trembling. 

“ After the shaking was over — and it wasn’t 
through with for a long time ; for they could feel 
the ground shake gently after the big shock was 
over — Uncle Jack’s father ran into the house and 
caught up a pail of water, and put out the fire in the 
fire place; for you see the earthquake had broken 
the chimney right square off. It was one of the 
whirling kind of earthquakes, and they found out 
afterward that ’most every body’s chimney in town 
was cracked or broken off. So they couldn’t have 
any more fire, ’cause Uncle Jack’s father was afraid 
the roof might get burned. The kitchen looked dread- 
fully, too, for the dishes were all knocked off the 
table, and the milk-pan that was sitting on the fiour- 
barrel had gone over, and all the milk was on the 
fioor. 

“ Well, they didn’t dare go back into the house. 


Kitty’s Jouenal. 


203 


because they were afraid another earthquake would 
come. The school-house was right across the road 
from Uncle Jack’s house, so he and Lou ran up the 
hill, and climbed up to the windows to peep in and 
see if the earthquake had done any harm. Uncle 
Jack couldn’t see for a minute, but after he got his 
head in the right light things looked dreadfully 
inside ! W hy, lots of the plastering had fallen down 
from the ceiling, and the mortar was lying all about 
the teacher’s desk and around on the floor, and lots 
of books had been shaken out of the desks, and were 
lying mixed up with the plaster. The big ink bottle 
had fallen ofl the teacher’s desk, too, and the ink was 
all in a little puddle with the broken glass. I tell 
you, I guess Uncle Jack was glad that earthquake 
didn’t come when the scholars were all in school ! I 
guess their heads would have been hit pretty hard, 
if they had been there. 

“ Well, Uncle Jack and Lou were looking in at the 
window when Mr. Sargent — he was the school-teach- 
er — came riding up on his horse, and he unlocked the 
door, for he was going to look over the school rooms 
to see what damage had been done. 

“ He invited Jack and Lou to go over the rooms 
with him, but they said, ‘ Ko, thank you,’ because 


204 A Piece of Kitty . Hunter’s Life. 

they were afraid that another earthquake might come, 
and, if it did, they’d rather be out-doors. 

“And some more earthquakes did come — lots of 
them. Uncle Jack and Lou went back to the house 
and got a cold breakfast, and then they went and sat on 
the front piazza, and about every half-hour or so an 
earthquake would come. It was ever so much worse 
than having to go to school. 

“ ‘ It’s coming again!’ Uncle Jack would scream, 
and then they would run out in the road, and Uncle 
Jack told Lou that she was just as white as a ghost 
every time it shook. And Lou said she didn’t know 
whether she was white or not, but she felt white. 

“ For, you see, they never knew whether a big one 
was coming or only a little one, so they kept worry- 
ing. It was a dreadful tiresome day. Uncle Jack felt 
scared all the time. And when night came they didn’t 
know what to do. 

“ I can’t go up-stairs to sleep,’ Jack’s mother said. 

“ And they all said so, too. It wasn’t any fun to 
have an earthquake come when they were out-doors, 
but up-stairs was worse. 

“ So at last they all said they’d sleep down in the 
sewing-room. They chose that 'because it was the 
room farthest away from the chimney. So they 


Kitty’s Journal. 


205 


dragged a mattress down, and Uncle Jack’s father 
and mother had that, and Uncle Jack and Lou had 
two lounges. But they didn’t dare undress, and they 
couldn’t more than get to sleep before an earthquake 
would come, and they would all jump up and run 
out-doors. Uncle Jack’s mother counted fifteen big 
and little earthquakes that night, and Uncle Jack’s 
father had a big boil on the back of his hand and it 
hurt him so that he groaned and kept them awake 
between the earthquakes, and at last he got up and 
lighted a candle and said he was going to lance that 
boil. So he got a lancet and tried to cut the boil 
open, but it hurt so that he tumbled back on the mat- 
tress and fainted, just as another earthquake came. 
So none of them slept very much that night, nor the 
next, nor the next. There were big cracks in the 
ground that were opened by the earthquakes, and the 
folks didn’t know any minute when the ground might 
open and sw'allow them all. But it didn’t. 

“ After about a week the earthquakes stopped, and 
every body went to work mending the broken chim- 
neys and fixing things. One of Uncle Jack’s neigh- 
bors, a carpenter, was up on top the church, fixing the 
steeple, when that first, biggest earthquake came, and 
he just let go the hammer and put both arms around 


206 A Piece oe Kitty Huntee’s Life. 

the spire tight^ and held on. It made him real dizzy, 
but he hung on till it sapped shaking, and then, I 
tell you, he just slipped down to the ground as quick 
as ever he could ! He said he never wanted such a 
ride as that again. 

“ And there was another of the neighbors — Uncle 
Jack said he thought she was one of the best w^omen 
in the church, anyway she used to talk and pray lots 
in meeting — well, she was standing in her kitchen 
when the earthquake began, and she just moved over 
to the window, when, crash ! came the chimney 
through the roof right on the very spot where she 
had been standing. If she’d stood there another 
minute she’d been killed, sure ! 

‘^'VVell, there wasn’t any school that week. Hone 
of the teachers dared stay in the school-house, so U n- 
cle Jack and Lou didn’t have to learn any lessons ; 
but I tell you Uncle Jack didn’t want any more vaca- 
tions of that kind ! ” 

“And don’t you think,” went on Billy, after a 
pause, “ Uncle Jack says that once after that he went 
down to Los Angeles, and he went into a Spanish 
church tliere — a real old thing — and upon the wall 
he saw a picture of an old man, and it said under- 
neath it in Spanish that his name was Saint Emigdius, 


Kitty's Journal. 


207 


and that he was the one that folks must pray to, to 
keep away earthquakes ! .And Uncle Jack said it 
made him feel real bad to think that folks should 
pray to a picture like that, to keep the earth still.^’ 

JUNE 29. 

I had a brilliant idea last week. I was looking 
over one of Grandma Grigsby’s papers, and I came 
across a story. It was the stupidest thing ; one of the 
kind of stories that people who don’t know any thing 
about children write for them. It was just the kind 
of story that a sensible child would detest. 

But it was an historical story. That is, it really 
happened away back in history some time. But it was 
written in so poor a style as to almost spoil it. 

Nevertheless it gave me an idea. 

“Now,” quoth I to myself, “if the publishers of 
that paper will take such a story as that probably 
they pay for it, for the paper looks like a flourishing, 
respectable one. And I know I could write better 
historical stories than that.” 

And so I fell into a brown study, the result of 
which was a religious-historical story of the days of 
the Huguenot persecutions under King Louis XIY. 
of France. The story was a true one, and I wrote 


208 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

it in mj best style. I always liked the story part 
of history. Kot the dates. I abhor them. But I 
suppose all history is interesting, if one could only 
find out about the interesting items belonging to each 
event. 

I mailed the letter, and I do hope that that paper 
will behold the beauty of my production and accept 
it. Grandma Grigsby takes that paper all the time, 
so I can see if I come out in print. 

I feel pretty tired after my work ! I begin to real- 
ize the truth of Lowell’s remark — 

“ Hard work is good aa’ wholesome, past all doubt, 

But ’taint so ef the mind gets tuckered out.” 

However, the next check that an editor sends will 
rest me. 

JITLY 7. 

“Uncle Jack” has arrived, according to Billy’s 
prediction. The man came last Friday, which was 
yesterday : the day Sir Thomas More was beheaded, 
according to the almanac. 

I was afraid that “ Uncle Jack” might be of the 
same style as that college youth to whom I have re- 
ferred as one of ma’s boarders. But the new boarder 
is very different. I should think, from what the chil- 


Krrry’s Journal. 


209 


dren tell me, that “ Uncle Jack ” is a Christian. I 
didn’t think that any of Billy’s folks were Christians, 
but perhaps they are. 

Billy is certainly a thoughtful little boy. He brought 
me some water-beetles the other day, and as we 
watched them diving, carrying down bubbles of air 
with them, suddenly Billy broke out, “Say, Miss 
Kitty, don’t you think that it’s awfully queer in God 
to make such things? How did he ever think so 
many of them up? Why, ’most every thing’s differ- 
ent — and there are so many kinds ! ” 

Billy is rather bashful when talking of religious 
things, so I was surprised at such an outburst. But I 
really think he has studied out for himself a slightly 
clearer idea of God’s wisdom than he used to have. 

“ I wonder,” went on Billy, as if he were reasoning 
out a thought that had long been forming itself in his 
brain, “ I don’t mean to be wicked. Miss Kitty — but 
don’t you think that after he made them, and saw them 
all alive, he might have felt kind of proud of them ? 
Just see that fellow go, now,” and Billy pointed to a 
“ water-boatman ” rowing its way through the water 
with the pair of oars while the bug lay on its back. 

“ How, if I’d made that, and got it so it would go 

like that, don’t you s’pose I’d feel proud of it ? ” 
14 


210 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

Billy went on. At least, if I didn’t feel proud, Pd 
like to have folks find it, and look at it, and talk about 
iny having made it.” 

‘^That is just what we are doing, isn’t it ?” I said. 
“But I’m glad you have thought about God’s having 
invented such creatures, Billy. You know that it 
tells us in the first chapter of Genesis that after God 
had filled the waters with living things, he looked, 
and saw that ‘ it was good.’ ” 

I don’t know how to talk of religious things to 
Billy. He is a very strange boy. It seems to me 
that one has to plan a good deal in order to know how 
to so present religious truths, even to children, as to 
do the most good. Each person is so different from 
otlier persons. I used to think that if one “ talked 
religion ” ’most anyhow it would fit people. But it 
doesn’t. One lias to be careful, and use one’s common- 
sense, just as one would about any thing else. Why, 
I believe I could so talk about religious things to 
Billy that he never would come near my “ Sunday- 
stool ” again. He’d be disgusted. And yet I do think 
that he reasons a good deal on such subjects. It’s a 
boyish sort of reasoning, of course, and he doesn’t say 
much about it, but it’s better than not thinking about 
such things at all. 


Kirry’s Journal. 


211 


JULY 9. 

That story that I wrote for the paper I used 
to write for is accepted. I received word this morn- 
ing that I should have pay as soon as the article is 
printed. 

Likewise a paper sent me two dollars and a half for 
an article on ‘‘ Poppies ” for the agricultural columns. 
And last month I had a string of rejected manu- 
scripts and I sold a couple of stories at five dollars 
each to a boys’ paper that Billy takes. So far, 
the amounts received each month, this year, are as 
follows : 


January . 
February 
March . . , 
April . . . 

May 

June. . . . 


$5 00 
Nothing 
Nothing 
$5 00 
18 00 
20 00 


I felt happy over May, in spite of the many rejected 
articles. Ma says she doesn’t like my business, be- 
. cause it makes me so nervous. Well, it’s a truth that 
the postman gives me the “ shivers ” every time he 
opens our front gate. But never mind. I’m getting 
along. Every one has rejected manuscripts at first. 
Still, I can’t expect to come up to twenty dollars in a 
month very soon again. 


212 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

JTJIjY 9— aptebnoon. 

“ Tell me a story, please, Uncle Jack.” 

That was Blusie’s voice out on the piazza. 

Blusie always ’wants people to tell her stories. I 
guess all children want people to. I used to ask 
when I was little, and I remember what a shock Mr. 
Dayton gave me. He had just come to our house for 
the first time. I was about eiglit years old, and he 
was talking with me, and I said, ‘‘ Do you tell stories ? ” 

“Ko,” said he, and a great sense of disappointment 
came over me. It was not till quite a while afterward 
that it dawned upon me that the man thought my ques- 
tion meant, “Do you tell lies? ” 

Ho wonder he answered “Ho.” 

He was able to tell quite interesting tales, as I found 
out afterward. 

“Uncle Jack” evidently knew what Blusie wanted. 

“All right,” said he. “What shall the story be 
about ? ” 

“About a little girl, just as big as me,” answered 
Blusie, in delightful disregard of grammar. And 
after thinking a minute, “Uncle Jack” began. 

“ Eva was visiting her aunt, who lived away up in a 
little town among the California foot-hills. The cli- 
mate seemed very warm to Eva, who was used to the 


Kitty’s Journal. 


213 


cool breezes of tlie sea-coast. However, the hot sun 
had ripened the fi’uit in lier aunt’s orchard, and the 
blackberries were ripe on the bushes, ready to be 
picked off by little fingers. 

‘‘ Between the rows of fruit-trees lay great water- 
melons that Eva’s uncle would carry down into the 
cool cellar to lie several hours till dinner-time. Then 
there were the fig-trees, and the little girl could climb 
into their branches and sit and eat the fruit, after 
peeling off the rough skins. There was a walnut- 
tree, too ; and uncle said that the nuts would be ripe 
in a month or so, and then Eva might gather them. 

“ Altogether, in spite of the hot weather, Eva 
thought she had a very good time. 

“ One day when she was standing on the broad 
front piazza and thinking that she would go down to 
the other end of the lot and get a bunch of grapes, 
there came along a queer-looking company of six 
persons. 

“ Eva did not see them until they were almost in- 
side the yard, for the high levee that was built all 
around the place to keep out the winter floods had 
liidden the people at first. They were dark people, 
dressed in old calico rags. There were three women, 
two men, and a baby. 


214 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

“The mother had the child strapped into a little 
kind of case, and carried it on her back. 

“ Eva was frightened at the appearance of the vis- 
itors, and ran into the house to find her aunt, who w’as 
out in the long, open back-kitchen, making plum-pies. 

“ ‘ O auntie,’ cried she, bursting in upon her, ‘ there 
are such a funnj-looking lot of people coming ! I’m 
afraid of them.’ 

“ But by this time the visitors had come around to 
the back door, and one of the men came up the 
steps. Eva’s aunt went to the door. 

“ ‘ O, it’s only the Indians,’ said she. 

“ ‘ Melon, give ? ’ grunted the Indian at the head of 
the steps. 

“ ‘ O, yes,’ said Eva’s aunt, ‘ go and get yourselves 
some melons. You may have all you want.’ 

“ So the two men went ofi to choose some of the 
nicest and ripest melons, and the three squaws sat 
down in the shade by the well. The woman who 
had the baby unstrapped it, and laid it down on the 
ground. It was a funny-looking child, and did not 
seem to feel very well. 

“ ‘ Papoose sick ? ’ asked Mrs. Nowell. 

“ ‘ Ugh,’ grunted the woman. 

“ ‘ Auntie, I’m afraid of them,’ whispered Eva. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


^15 

“ ‘ Why, child, you needn’t be a bit afraid,’ said 
her aunt. ‘ These Indians never hurt any one. All 
they want is just some water-melons. They come 
here every year for them.’ 

“ ‘ Do you always give them some ? ’ asked Eva. 

“ ‘ Yes,’ said her aunt. ‘ I didn’t do so the first 
time they came, but I found out that I had better have 
given them as many as they could eat; for that night 
they broke in and carried ofi ever so many melons — 
the very nicest ones, too. So I lost more than I 
should if I had let them have some when they asked 
me.’ 

“ ‘ Don’t they know it is wrong to steal ? ’ asked 
Eva. 

“ ‘ I don’t believe they do,’ said her aunt. ‘ Maybe 
they know, but they don’t act as if they did.’ 

“ ‘ I should think they would read the Bible and 
find out,’ said Eva. 

a < Why, you don’t suppose they can read, do 
you ? ’ said Mrs. Kowell. ‘ Why, none of them so 
much as know their letters.’ 

‘‘Eva stood looking at the Indians and pitying 
them very much. Pretty soon the two men came 
back, loaded down with seven or eight huge water- 
melons. The men threw them on the ground, broke 


216 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

them open, and then all began eating, except the 
little papoose. After a time the melons were fin- 
ished, the woman strapped her sick child on her back 
again, and the Indians went off without another word, 
leaving the melon-rinds scattered around the pump. 

“Eva went back to the kitchen, and stood watch- 
ing her aunt as she drew the hot pies out of the oven. 

“ ‘ Auntie,’ said she, ‘ couldn’t the Indians go to 
Sabbath -school, or to church ? ’ 

“ ‘ I’m afraid they would not behave very well,’ 
answered her aunt. 

“ ‘ Didn’t any of them ever go ? ’ asked Eva. 

“ ‘ Yes,’ said her aunt. ‘ I remember I did see one 
at church once. I don’t think he could have belonged 
to this tribe, though. He dressed after a civilized 
fashion, and his hair had been cut. He sat on a back 
seat, near the door, and kept his hat on part of the 
time.’ 

“ ‘ Did he listen to the minister?’ asked Eva. 

“ ‘ I don’t think he understood very well,’ said Mrs. 
Howell. ‘ He seemed to like the singing best, and 
he looked at the hymn-book a good deal. He seemed 
to be ashamed to think he was in a congregation of 
white people, and he bent down behind the pew so 
that he could hardly be seen.’ 


Kitty’s Journal. 217 

“‘Well, I wish they could learn about Jesus, and 
about how to go to heaven,’ said Eva. 

“ ‘ Some people do try to teach them,’ said her 
aunt, ‘ but 1 am afraid that not many Indians care to 
learn.’ 

“ A few days after this Eva was sitting with her 
aunt and uncle on the piazza just about sundown. 
All at once her uncle said, ‘ Hark ! ’ and they stopped* 
talking and listened. 

“ This was a good deal like the sound,” and “ Uncle 
Jack” stopped in his story and uttered a long, loud 
wail. It sounded like a dog’s howl in the distance, 
or some such sound, and it made Blusie jump. 

“ Isn’t that dreadful ! ” said she. 

“ Yes,” said “ Uncle Jack.” “ Eva thought it was. 

“ ‘ What is it ? ’ said she. 

“ ‘ Some one has died among the Indians,’ ex- 
plained her aunt. ‘The Indians around here always 
cry like that whenever there is a death. You can 
hear them very plainly, though they must be half a 
mile away.’ 

“ The next day Mrs. ISTowell saw one of the Indians 
who had been at her house for water-melons. His 
face was all streaked with ashes; for those Indians 
burn their dead, and then take the ashes and mark 


218 A Piece of Kfity Huntee’s Life. 

tlieir faces with them. The marks are a sign of grief. 

“ Well, this Indian said that the little papoose was 
the one that died. 

‘‘ Eva felt very sorry for the little baby. 

‘ Do you suppose it went to heaven ? ’ asked she. 

‘ Yes, dear,’ said her aunt. ‘ It is in heaven now. 
Jesus died for little Indian babies as well for white 
ones.’ 

“ < I’m glad of that,’ said Eva. ‘ And I guess maybe 
God thought it would be better for it to die when it 
was little, and go to heaven, than live to be old and 
become wicked, so it couldn’t ever go there.’ ” 

‘‘Uncle Jack” stopped talking, and every thing 
was still for a while. Then Blusie spoke. 

“Uncle Jack,” she said, “when I go to heaven, 
shall I see that Indian baby ? ” 

“I hope so,” said Mr. Price. 

“I’ll ask Jesus to point the baby out to me,” said 
Blusie. “ Then I’ll know.” 

“Do you love Jesus, Blusie?” asked Uncle Jack, 
as the little girl slipped off his knee. 

“ ’Course I do,” answered Blusie, confidently. 
“Why, I love him evej^ so much. Miss Kitten told 
me all about him. I didn’t know before.” 

That was the end of the talk. But it made me so 


Kitty’s Jouenal. 


219 


thankful to think that I have been permitted to 
teach even one little child about our Saviour. 
Blusie isn’t as much of a heathen as those Indians 
are, any way. 


JTJIiY 27. 

Journal, it’s just perfectly wonderful, but my 
Huguenot story did sell. Grandma Grigsby’s paper, 
or the editor of it, rather, is a jewel ! He sent me 
live whole dollars for that story. See if he doesn’t 
hear from me again ! I’m going to write him — or 
his “Children’s Column” — a story about that Hakon, 
King of Ho.rway, who had such trouble with his 
people when he tried to introduce Christianity into 
the realm. I think that would malie a good children’s 
story. I’m surprised that some one liasn’t written 
it already for that paper. But I’m very glad I 
thought of it. I’m almost certain I’ll get five dollars 
more for Hakon. 

I bought a dollar’s worth of stamps, and gave ma 
the other four dollars. I told her that I am going to 
pay her for my board some day. Which speech made 
ma exceedingly wrathful. 

One loves some people so much that one has to 
make them mad before they can fully understand it. 


220 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

AUaTTST 10. 

Ma liad a visitor yesterday. Mrs. Curtis came to 
see her and stayed an hour. 

Mrs. Curtis never has any judgment, seems to me. 
She’s full of hints, and makes one feel angry, almost, 
sometimes. She hinted yesterday about ‘‘folks that 
loved their children too much,” and “folks that 
thought a sight too much of each other.” 

I know she thinks Effie and papa’s deaths were 
judgments on mamma and me. I don’t feel that way 
at all. I feel that God loved them, and saw that 
they had home enough and were ready, and so he took 
them. And I don’t think it was because we loved 
one another, because I am sure that we all loved God 
more. There's a good deal of difference between 
“loving” and “worshiping.” Whenever I hear Mrs. 
Curtis talking that way, I always want to say to her 
in Dante’s words — 

“ Now, who art thou, that on the bench wouldst sit 
In judgment at a thousand miles away, 

With the short vision of a single span ? ” 

SEPTEMBER 14. 

That “Farm and Garden” editor doesn’t seem to 
know whether I’m a man or woman. I always sign 
myseK “ K. Hunter,” and the man has tried writing 


Kitty’s Journal. 


221 


Mr.” and Mrs.” and “ Miss ” on the outside of the 
letters that he sends the checks in, but I never say 
any thing to him about the correctness of any of the 
designations, so now he has given up in despair and 
just puts “ K. Hunter ” on the envelopes. If he wants 
to know which I am, why doesn’t he ask, instead of 
trying experiments ? The postman knows who I am, 
any way, and I don’t care if I only get my letters. 

Isn’t it queer how letters come to dead people! 
Every now and then we get letters or papers for papa 
or Effie, and w'e are always receiving circulars about 
new medicines, and specimen copies of medical mag- 
azines, addressed to papa. It seems so strange that 
two deaths, that make such a difference to us, make so 
little difference to the world that people don’t even 
know that the deaths have occurred. It shocked me 
greatly at first to receive things addressed to papa or 
Effie, but Em used to it now. 

That agricultural editor seems to be quite interested 
ill the histories of plants, so I hunt up all the enter- 
taining items I can find for him. It’s rather inter- 
esting to me, too. I didn’t know before that Latimer 
used to call the country ministers “strawberry 
preachers ” because they strayed from their parishes, 
going back to them once a year. This isn’t exactly 


222 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

an agricultural item, but I brought it into an article 
on the “ History of Berries.” 

And I’ve found out that people used to pay pepper- 
corn rents ” instead of money, the rents being a pound 
of pepper, paid as often as agreed on. And ginger 
used to be spelled ‘‘ gingiver ” and “ gingiber ” and 
‘‘ gingefere.” And people used to respect saffron, 
and in the far East the saffron blossoming on a grave 
was considered a sign of the blessed destiny of the dead. 
And the Homans used to say of a person who had a 
happy disposition, “ He hath slept on a bag of saf- 
fron.” And Henry lY. was so angry when indigo 
was introduced into Franco that he called the stuff the 
devil’s food,” and commanded that if any one used it, 
he should be put to death. And didn’t Pythagoras 
say that beans had souls, and folks must not eat them ? 
And didn’t old English people use to sow wheat and 
rye together in the same field, and harvest the two 
grains together, and make a kind of bread out of 
them, which bread was called “ maslin ” or ‘‘ meslin ? ” 
And isn’t this a miscellaneous lot of knowledge ! But 
never mind. It interests the editor and I get paid 
for it, though not exactly when it is written in the 
present style. These are only the artist’s first 
sketches. 


Kitty’s Journal 


223 


SEPTEIVCBER 17. 

A while ago I read somewhere that if a writer de- 
sires to improve his vocabulary — extend it, I mean — 
he should sometimes write poetry, not necessarily for 
publication, but just for practice, to make him think 
of new words. Kow, I am not such an idiot as to 
imagine that I can write real poetry. I know I can’t. 
But still, if scribbling i-hymes will tend to make my 
prose writings better, I may try the plan once in a 
wdiile. 

Here are some rhymes that I wrote just to amuse 
myself. The piece is about an old lady I used to see 
around here before I was sick. I did not know her, 
but she used to sit on those steps in front of our gate. 
I can just see them from my window, and looking at 
them made me think about her one day. So I scrib- 
bled this off on some scraps of brown paper. It was 
hard work to think of so many rhymes, and I thought 
I had made quite a find when I coined the word 
‘‘stranger-creed.” I don’t believe I’ll try to w’rite 
many rhymes. It takes too much time, and the 
rhymes wouldn’t sell very well after they are done, 
I’m afraid. And money is what I must try to make, 
if my writing is ever going to amount to any thing. 

Here are these any way, if I never write any more : 


224 


A Piece of Kitiy Hunter’s Life. 


THE OLD CARRIAGE-BLOCK. 

There it stands before the gate, 
Burdened with the shadow-weight 
Of the trees o’erhead. 

It is faded now, you see. 

But its three steps used to be 
Bright with blue and red. 

Oft, in those days long ago, 

Came there hither, pacing slow, 

One whose weary tread 
Turned from out the sultry heat 
Of the dusty city street 
To this rest instead. 

Old and wrinkled was her face. 

Yet therein there shone a grace 
That to others said, 

“ Life hath held for me much grief. 

Now death’s peace, that brings relief, 
Wherefore should I dread ? ” 

Wrapped about in garb of gray. 

Here she sat day after day. 

While above, outspread. 

Her old-fashioned sunshade made 
For her book a place of shade 
Where she sometimes read. 

But as one whom fate denies 
Something longed for, so her eyes 
Held a wish unsaid. 

As she often turned her gaze 
Toward the flowers whose summer blaze 
Filled each garden bed. 


Kitty’s Journal. 


225 


Silent, she was wont to read, 

As, by common stranger-creed, 

Speech prohibited. 

But one day she spoke her thought, 
Told what daily to this spot 
Her faint foot-steps led. 

“ Once I had a garden, too ; 

Ah, what lovely flowers grew 
By my home 1 ” she said, 

And then drew a tired sigh 
For- that time so long gone by 
With its beauty fled. 

In her home-sick heart remained 
Still a thought that inly pained 
And disquieted ; 

In a stranger-land to die, 

Under foreign sods to lie 
All unvisited! 

“ Maybe in that other land,” 

And her trembling, wrinkled hand 
Pointed up o’erhead, 

“ I shall have my flowers some day. 

Do you think perhaps I may ? ” 
Wistfully she said. 

Ah, sad soul, though years have passed 
Since your lips that question asked, 
Lingering in your stead 
Still your memory will stay 
With that old seat by the way, 

Which, interpreted. 




15 


I 


226 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

Saith to me forevermore, 

When I look out from my door, 

^ Ah, she is not dead. 

But, beneath far nobler trees. 

Those whose leaves heal earth’s disease. 

She is comforted.” 

Alas, alas! I shall never he a poet. Ko mortal 
would ever believe how long a time it took me to 
think of those rhymes. When I discovered that 
‘‘ interpreted ” rhymes with stead,” I was happy ; 
when I found that “ unsaid ” rhymes (at least a little) 
with “garden-bed,” I was jubilant ; but when I fairly 
comprehended that “speech prohibited” will rhyme 
with “led,” I was completely overwhelmed by the 
possibilities of the English language. 

Still, though I have no wish to do so, I can see 
faults in this “ poem.” For instance, in reading it 
over, my ear forced upon me the painful fact that 
“ disquieted ” does not rhyme very well with “ unvis- 
ited.” I was displeased with my ear for informing 
me of this. But my ear insisted then, as it continues 
to insist now, that it is so. 

But I was sorry for that old lady. She used to 
live at one of the hotels right on the dusty street 
down town. She was very feeble, but she used to 
manage to walk up here and sit on that block almost 


Kitty’s Journal. 


227 


every day. I didn’t know what attracted her, for a 
time, but one day she told me, and she said she missed 
her old garden so, being here away from home. She 
never expected to go home again, and then she asked 
me that queer question about whether I thought there 
would be some flowers up there ” that she might 
have. 

She pointed up as she said it, so I knew what she 
meant. And I told her I was very sure there 
would be flowers in heaven. I think so still. Does 
not John speak of the “tree of life” on either side of 
the “ river of water of life ? ” And if there are trees 
why should there not be flowers ? 

Anyway, 1 couldn’t have told the poor old soul 
“Ko.” She seemed to be a Christian. Indeed, I 
have no doubt that she was one. And I hope that 
some day, when I walk through that upper and better 
country, I shall see my old lady with her hands full 
of blossoms, and shall hear her cry out to me, “ See, 
see ! There are flowers in heaven. Don’t you re- 
member that you and I thought there would be? 
Are these not much more beautiful than those blos- 
soms you used to give me on earth ? ” 

And her face, no longer lined with pain, will smile 
at me. 


228 A Piece of Kitty Huntee’s Life. 

Is it wrong to think such things of heaven ? Is it 
indeed a country so very different in all things from 
this that those who go there must needs forget all 
the longings and feelings of this life ? I do not be- 
lieve I shall forget when I am dead. Why should 
I be any less intelligent in heaven than I am here ? 
And is not a knowledge of heart-strife and soul- 
hunger, of the thousand longings that fill the human 
mind, part of intelligence? Shall we ever forget 
such things, even if we are an infinite space away 
from earth ? I am persuaded that I shall not. I 
think I could remember more clearly without my body 
than with it sometimes now. Shall I not then? 
Therefore, I shall now continue to imagine that some 
day my old lady will talk with me about those 
flowers. 


DECEMBEB 31. 

Mother was making out accounts this afternoon, 
and when she was through I said, “ Mamma, will you 
do an example for me ? ” 

“ If it isn’t too hard a one,” said she. 

“ I wish,” I said, “ that you would take one of your 
old expense books, and calculate how much, or rather 
how little, it would take for you and me to live a year. 


Kitty’s Jottknal. 


229 


“Why do you want to know that?” asked ma, as 
she pulled open a drawer and began looking for some 
of her old books. 

“ I’d just like to know,” I answered. “ I’ve been 
wondering.” 

So ma entered into an elaborate series of calcula- 
tions, and at the end of three quarters of an hour she 
announced that, as we had our own house and so 
didn’t have to pay rent, she thought that she and I 
could live if we had an income of six hundred dol- 
lars per year. 

“ Do you really think so ? ” I asked. 

I had had no idea that she would mention so small 
a sum. 

“ Why, yes,” said mother, looking over her paper 
of figures. “ I don’t see why not.” 

“ Guess how much I earned last year ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said ma, looking at me anxious- 
ly. “ I am afraid you are doing too much writing.” 

“Ko, I’m not,” I said, joyfully, as I waved a bit 
of paper. “Just look here, ma. I’ve had ’most one 
hundred dollars from writing. And don’t you think 
that’s pretty good for the first year?” 

And I read ma the list. My “historical paper” 
had paid me twenty-five dollars for five history 


230 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

stories. A cliild’s paper had paid me twenty-six 
dollars for “ bug-articles ” and stories. Two papers 
had paid me respectively eighteen dollars and seventy- 
five cents and four dollars and thirty-five cents for 
articles for the garden department. Another paper 
had paid ten dollars for two stories, another tw^o dol- 
lars for one story another S3ven dollars for two stories, 
and another five dollars for three stories. This last 
paper paid only a dollar a column. 

“ There ! ” said I to ma. ‘‘ That makes ninety- 
eight dollars and ten cents. Don’t you think I’ve 
done pretty well ? Don’t you think that may be, if 
I’m smart and work along year after year, that some 
day you can say to all the boarders, ‘ I have an 
announcement to make. You may every one of you 
go to your rooms and pack your trunks for removal. 
I shall never keep boarders again. My daughter now 
earns six hundred dollars a year, and she and I can 
live on that ! ” 

“ You ridiculous child ! ” said ma, and she laughed 
a little. But she looked like crying, too ; so I made 
haste to say, “You see if I don’t do it some day, 
ma’am I And in your parting speech to your board- 
ers, don’t forget to suggest to them that they might 
make you some present before going, so that you 


Kitty’s Journal. 


231 


might always keep it to show as a testimonial of 
your virtues as a landlady ! ” 

My Journal, I do not know but this is a very wild 
scheme. But I like to think about it, and I am very 
glad to know that I can earn even a little. I used to 
think that it was a very visionary scheme to think 
of earning one’s living by writing, but now I don’t 
know whether it is or not. Of course I never expect 
to become famous. I haven’t brains enough for that. 
But may be, if I try to do the very best I can all the 
time, my brains will grow some ; at least my faculty 
for writing might, I should think. And may be 
some of the things I write may do some good to 
some one — some little child, perhaps, whom I shall 
never see. I hope it may be so. I pray it may be so. 
Such a thing as that would be better than any money. 

For stories do influence children. I know that is 
so. Do not I remember, when I was ten or eleven, 
reading a Sabbath-school book, and laying it down 
when I was through with it and crying as though 
my heart would break ? 

Mother asked me what was the matter, and I didn’t 
answer. But Effie said, “ O, the little girl’s mother 
in the story died. That’s what makes Kittie cry.” 

But it wasn’t that. 


232 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

Mother tried to comfort me by telling me that she 
didn’t think that she should die for a good many 
years. 

But it wasn’t that at all. I was not so much affect- 
ed over the mother’s death in the story. I don’t 
think I took much interest in that mother anyway. 

But it was the part of the story where the little 
girl became a Christian. I read that part over and 
over again. I wanted to understand just how she did 
it. And, with all my trying to comprehend, I 
didn’t understand it at all. And I wanted to he a 
Christian myself so much. And so, when I had 
read the place over and over, and could not make 
out at all what the little girl did to become one, I 
just laid my head down on tliat book and cried. 
And then folks thought I cried about the dead 
mother ! 

People needn’t tell me that children skip all the 
morals in stories. I don’t believe it. I used not to 
skip them, though I don’t know that I would have 
told any one then that I read them. 

I don’t mean that children are greedy for moral 
or Christian teaching. But I do think that when the 
fundamental truths of Christianity are presented in 
a simple, child-like way, without the use of too many 


Kitty’s Journal. 


233 


“big words,” children will read such things, and 
think about them afterward, too. At least I used 
to, and I know there wasn’t a bit of a saint about me 
then, any more than there is now. 

I have written fifty-two articles this last year, one 
every week. A good many of them have sold, some 
of them have not. A few have been accepted 
and are yet to be paid for. I noticed that all the 
really good stories that I have written have sold 
more quickly than other things, such as “ general in- 
formation articles,” for instance. 

Of course there have been some very discouraging 
things about my work. There were three months 
this last year in which I never received a cent. I 
set down by months last July the amounts received 
during the first half-year. Here are the amounts for 
the second half-year: 


July 

August. . . 
September 
October. . . 
November. 
December. 


$15 00 
3 15 
6 00 
13 00 
Nothing. 
$12 35 


Of course it’s a very small amount of money for 
a year’s work. It’s less than any servant-girl would 


234 


A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 


earn. But I am thankful to have been able to earn 
any thing. And I feel that the ideas that the editors 
have paid me for were all sent to me. For I asked 
God to help me. Even in the little children-stories 
that were not religious at all, only amusing, with 
perhaps some scraps of morals in them, I have asked 
him to help me. I never try to write without asking, 
because I believe that God really cares whether I 
succeed or not. Does not the Bible say, “ In all thy 
ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy 
paths ? ” And I do not think he would have put it 
into my mind to write if he had not intended to 
show me a way by which I might still help myself a 
little. 

But it is not work that I would recommend to any 
one who was not sure that it was the work meant for 
him. For there have been many, many sorrowful 
times this last year — days when I have cried myself 
almost sick over rejected manuscripts ; days when I 
have felt sure that I could never write another word ; 
days when the writing has made me so nervous that 
I felt like being cross with every one ; days when my 
head ached, when my fingers ached with the copying, 
when my heart ached because I had uncovered some 
old sorrow or some remembrance of the past and was 


Kitty’s Journal. 


235 


writing it up,” hoping to make something out of my 
experiences. And there have been some very glad 
days ; days when the checks came — days when papers 
came with my articles in them ; days when editors 
let drop some kindly little sentences that did me 
worlds of good. And on such days I usually re- 
marked to myself that there is a certain old song that 
goes by the name of ‘‘ Try, try again.” 

JAJNTTAHY 1. 

My Journal, you are almost full. How many hopes 
and sorrows I have written in you ! There is room 
enough for only a few words more. But O, let those 
few words be words of thankfulness, for there have 
been enough words of complaint in this book ! 

I am not the person that I was when I began this 
Journal. I can never again be that person. But I do 
not know that I regret it. 

In that same old copy of Alexander on Religious 
Experience^ from which I have quoted before in 
this Journal, are these words, “ The knowledge to be 
derived from studying the book of God’s providence 
cannot be communicated to another ; the lessons are 
like the name upon the white stone, which none can 
read but he that has it. The successive events of our 


236 A Piece of Kitty Hunter’s Life. 

lives we can make known, but the connection which 
these events have with our character, our sins, and 
our prayers, can be fully understood only by our- 
selves.” 

I arn sure that those words are true. For although 
I have written in this book the various things that 
have come to me, yet, if a stranger should read this 
Journal, he would not feel between the words what I 
feel when I look them over. I read something in 
Dante the other day that I think is so : 

“ And like as a pilgrim, who goeth upon a road on 
which he never was before, thinketh every house he 
seeth afar off to be an inn, and not finding it so, di- 
recteth his trust to the next, and thus from house to 
house until he reacheth the inn ; in like manner our 
soul, presently as she endureth the new and untrav- 
eled road of this life, turneth her eyes to the goal of 
her supreme good.” 

It takes so long for one to comprehend that the 
“ inn,” the resting-place, is not on the road, but at the 
end of it ! But there is one thing of which I am cer- 
tain, and that is that when we four meet again in that 
home where there will be no more parting, we shall 
thank our God for all the way that he led us during 
the “ days of the years of our pilgrimage.” 


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